


and good things ahead

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - High School, Cheating, M/M, Teacher-Student Relationship, tw: homophobic slurs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:03:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1166757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is a below average student, and Enjolras is an above-average teacher. Grantaire is going to make it through this year if it kills him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  


“I think I’m going to die,” Grantaire announces with an air of detached melodrama. “I need a cigarette.”

 

“What you need is to stop bitching,” Éponine says lightly, swiping her Metro pass. They skitter down gum-sticky concrete steps into Paris’s fluorescent-lit underbelly. Commuters and students already crowd the train platform, a friendly reminder that they’re not alone in this far-too-early wakeup call.

 

Grantaire flips her off—she punches his arm—he winces—they sidles onto the train, slouch on a blue plastic bench next to a rangy-looking young guy in an Arsenal jersey. They share Éponine’s iPod, listen to Top 40 hits until Grantaire’s ears are ringing. His temples throb something awful, and he tries to ignore it as the train slides to a stop in the 20th Arrondissement and they disembark, but Jesus he needs a fucking aspirin.

 

“So, why the fuck,” Éponine mumbles, cramming her iPod into her jacket pocket as they ascend the steps, squinting in the brutality of early morning light, “does school start so goddamn early?”

 

School. Yeah.

 

Grantaire, who has been privately dreading this year (as with all years, honestly), mumbles some vague agreement. His throat feels tight and his stomach empty, hollow. Because he’s never been remotely good at school, not the way that some people are. Éponine, who gets equally trashed on the weekends, still manages to skate by with decent grades, excels in singing and is a member of the school’s relatively prestigious choir. Courfeyrac (who actually applies himself, a rarity) has been scoring 17/20 since they started at Lycée Lamarque and gotten himself mushed in with the remarkably small band of ‘gifted’ kids who teachers look forward to teaching. Because Courfeyrac has a way with words, and charisma to spare, and Marius is practically a maths prodigy, and despite the pride he feels for them (and he’s so, so proud of them) Grantaire can’t fight the terrible, sinking feeling that he’s somehow lacking something that they’ve got, that he’ll never have it because it’s obviously something you’re born with—intelligence, creativity, pure intellect, cleverness, the things that teachers in movies rant about while standing on top of desks.

 

“Um,” Éponine reaches over to touch his shoulder; lightly, but it brings him back to the world. “Are you okay?”

 

“Oui,” Grantaire mutters, the word loose and relaxed in his mouth. He and Éponine will have to drop the slang by midday; teachers don’t like it when they talk like street kids in the classroom. It’s easier for Éponine. She’s taught herself how to talk properly in front of teachers, talk like a rich kid. It impresses the teachers, and impresses Marius, who by all default is a rich kid, or at least the richest kid Grantaire knows.

It’s not so easy for Grantaire, whose words seem to stick in his mouth sometimes, who falls back on sarcastic remarks rife with argot.

 

“It’s just a drag,” he says by way of explanation, and gestures towards the school. Streetside, it looks spectacularly drab, all gray concrete blocks and small windows. There are already students thronged around the iron gate and in the yard: talking, booting around a football, sneaking last-minute cigarettes before the bell rings.

 

Éponine is accosted at once by a group of girlfriends, so Grantaire skulks around the perimeter of their circle, listening to hurried chatter about what happened last weekend at Musichetta’s place.

 

He catches that someone’s been hooking up with Joly—is it Musichetta?—and that Bossuet is somehow involved, and that someone’s ex-boyfriend named Abel looks really, really ugly with his hair buzzed off. Grantaire is amazingly thankful when the bell screams.

 

He’s checked and rechecked his schedule, and he’s definitely got History of Art first. This is a surprise, hence the rechecking, because Grantaire’s never landed a good class like this. He takes the stairs two at a time after bidding Éponine and company a hurried goodbye and finds a group of students already waiting outside classroom 1B. Jehan Prouvaire is there, lanky and freckled with hair grown out past his shoulders and a thin, rakish face. He beams when he sees Grantaire and they embrace tightly.

 

“I feel like we haven’t seen each other in years,” Jehan says, sliding a bookmark between the pages of his slender novel. “It must’ve only been a few weeks, though. Hasn’t it been?”

 

“I think it’s been about a month,” Grantaire admits. The last time they saw each other Jehan was supposed to be working at a bookshop near the Eiffel Tower (because, hey, tourist money is good money, right?) but they skipped out on that and went to smoke weed down by the Seine. It had been a cloudy day, but warm, and he’d felt good and safe and if they’d gone a little out of their minds with laughing that was okay.

 

It’s a reminder that everything will (probably) be alright. Being around Jehan does that to Grantaire.

 

“What are you reading?” He bends to examine the book; the cover is splashed with a grimy oil painting of some men building a bridge.

 

“Notre-Dame de Paris, dude, it’s beautiful,” Jehan says, and launches into an explanation of the novel (like that Disney movie, right, only much, much sadder because the author, Hugo, whose name sounds kind of familiar to Grantaire, has this penchant for killing, like, every single fucking character) that lasts up until the classroom door is pulled open and they all file inside.

 

The teacher, Monsieur Dupont, is boring and old and white-haired. He talks very slowly and quietly about how difficult the course will be, and then tells them to get out paper and take some notes, and dives headfirst into a lecture about prehistoric art.

 

Grantaire is lost within about ten minutes. He can hardly hear Dupont talking, the guy’s handwriting on the chalkboard is frankly abysmal, and he doesn’t really care about some cave paintings in Lascaux, and he’s still got a hell of a hangover. The throb in his temples has subsided, but barely so, and when Monsieur Dupont slaps a wooden pointer against the chalkboard white zigzags of pain flash in front of his eyes.

 

Grantaire doesn’t think he’s ever been in a class where such silence reigned. No students shout out or roughhouse or interrupt the teacher to make stupid crass remarks. Everyone is silence. The girl to his right has fallen asleep. Jehan doodles in the margins of his notes.

 

Within five minutes of leaving the classroom, Grantaire’s forgotten everything and hasn’t bothered to write down the homework assignment.

 

“Do you think Dupont meant what he said?” Jehan skitters up beside Grantaire, “About the class bring so hard?”

 

“Dunno.” Grantaire swallows away a sinking feeling. “Maybe.”

 

But as they head to their next class—Political Science, another joke—Grantaire feels absolutely sickened. He should have guessed that, even in Art History (and that’s supposed to be his strength, dammit, that’s supposed to be his thing, art is) he won’t be able to keep up, he’ll piss away class time staring into space and he’ll flunk every test and be pulling 10/20 by the end of the first term.

 

Jehan is quiet after that, like maybe he sense that something is wrong. He doesn’t pry; that’s not in Jehan’s nature. He’s easygoing, sensitive, knows when silence is better than words. They meet up with Éponine in the stairwell—it’s already been established that they all share Poly Sci this term, which disheartens Grantaire even more because it means another few months of watching his friends excel while he falls behind—and she’s in a spectacularly foul mood.

 

“What’s up?” Grantaire asks, putting an arm around her shoulders. He feels her bones shift under her skin, her human warmth.

 

“Nothing,” she murmurs, “it isn’t anything, just shit as usual.”

 

The cryptic reply is confusing until they convene outside the Poly Sci classroom and Grantaire sees Marius at once, looking handsome and tanned, talking with a striking blond girl. She’s willowy and beautiful, the shiny kind of beautiful you see in magazines, and Éponine’s eyes go hooded at the sight of her.

 

“Is that Valjean’s daughter?” Jehan leans in close to whisper.

 

“She spent a year abroad in England,” Éponine murmurs, but the words seem to curdle in her mouth. “Marius hasn’t stopped talking about her all morning.”

 

“He’ll be over her by noon,” Jehan says, but doesn’t look convinced. Grantaire tries to distract Éponine by running his mouth off about their weekend plans and retelling a stale joke that he heard at a house party on Saturday night, and to his credit she’s half-smiling when the door swings open and—

 

—and Grantaire’s world spins around him.

 

He’s thrown off his axis by the high cheekbones, halo of golden hair, the aqualine edge of a straight nose. Red lips, curved into something that he barely recognizes as a smile but none of that matters because holy God he can’t see properly.

 

“Bonjour, bonjour, bienvenue,” and the classroom door is propped open; students begin to stream in.

 

“Well, he’s a looker,” Jehan says lightly, hoisting his bookbag higher onto his shoulder.

 

Grantaire thinks he nods. He follows Jehan and Éponine into the classroom, feels like he’s floating, his feet aren’t even touching the ground. Jehan and Éponine claim desks in the front row; Grantaire follows suit. They both turn to stare at him—surprised, he thinks. They’re surprised, and rightfully so, because Grantaire’s usual seat of choice very, very in the back, where he’s unlikely to be called upon to answer questions.

 

Do I want to draw attention to myself?

 

He pulls out his notebook, flips past scant History of Art notes, turning to a new page. Uncaps a pen. It feels right, somehow.

 

“Welcome, everyone.” The teacher—god, he’s unfairly beautiful, that flawless skin and smooth curve of neck, wearing a sweater and no necktie and Grantaire’s mind flashes immediately to what he’d look like getting fucked, or fucking someone. “I’m,” and he goes to the chalkboard, scrawls on it in broad letters, “Monsieur Enjolras. D’accord?”

 

A few murmured ‘okay’s. Grantaire stares, transfixed.

 

“I would assume that a majority of you are here because you’re interested in politics. Or you’ve wandered into the wrong classroom by mistake.” Light laughter. “We’ll start by getting to know each other a little better, because as many of you have probably guessed, I’m new and you’re all new to me.”

 

Grantaire realizes that he’s subconsciously been biting on his lower lip, hard and relentless. Enjolras sits down on the front of his desk, feet swinging three inches off the ground.

 

“We’ll start in the front, go around. Just shout out your first name, I’ll mark you down on the roster, and please name one of your political inspirations. I won’t use the word ‘idol’ because I think it’s inappropriate in most situations. It can be anyone—someone whose speeches you admire, whose ideals align with your own.”

 

They start with Claire d’Eleine, who admires Gandhi because she is a pacifist, go on to Abdul Firmin, who respects Barack Obama, and Grantaire doesn’t catch why because his palms are starting to sweat.

 

He can’t think properly. He hears Jehan introduce himself and say something, some name but Grantaire’s trying to breathe evenly and fuck fuck fuck fuck everything he can’t think of a single political leader. Gandhi is an obvious choice, human suffering and all that, but someone’s already done Gandhi and within the space of a heartbeat Enjolras is turning his gaze upon Grantaire.

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“G-Grantaire.” Swallow, inhale. Swallow, inhale. Enjolras looks down at the roster, crosses out a name.

 

“And you admire…?”

 

“No one.” The words drop from his lips like stones. Silence falls. Jehan turns and stares. Éponine snorts softly, under her breath, disbelieving.

 

“No one?”

 

“Politicians are liars and thieves. They take what’s not rightfully theirs and put on airs. They pretend to speak for the people, but they only speak for themselves, yeah?”

 

Enjolras arches an eyebrow. His tongue runs across his lower lip, a single swift motion, and Grantaire’s stomach lurches. He feels himself getting hard under the desk, tries to shift in his seat but that won’t make it any less obvious. Forces a neutral expression onto his face.

 

“Alright,” Enjolras says. “I’m afraid that you’ll find cynicism will only weigh you down in this class, but it’s an alright start.”

 

Grantaire stares at the top of his desk. Images flash unbidden through his mind—Enjolras with his head thrown back, lips parted. What would he look like getting sucked off? What would he moan like during sex?

 

Fuck. Grantaire’s eyes are practically watering. He passes the rest of the class in agony, listens to Enjolras give a brief overview of the year (and he can tell he’s going to flunk already) and a lecture about the structure of the current French government. As soon as the bell rings he’s flying out of his seat, abandoning Jehan and Éponine and banging down the hall into the boy’s washroom. He locks himself in a stall and shoves a hand down his pants, barely stifling a moan as he puts a hand around his cock. He jerks off quickly, legs trembling, mind flooded with garish images of Enjolras in compromising positions—and he comes too soon. Thankfully, someone flushes a urinal at the same time, giving Grantaire the freedom to moan fuck into the skin of his forearm, loud as he pleases.

 

He hurries down the hall red-faced with shame, and is five minutes late to his next class.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this became an unintentionally long chapter—but i hope that you all enjoy it! i'll definitely strive to insert more french into future chapters, because it's a good way to practice grammar in a native-speaker context and not a second-language-classroom context!

"I don't believe this." Grantaire thumbs through his textbook, past stark black-and-white illustrations—a government building, a hall of justice, some scales. "Twenty questions?"

 

"Sorry, man." Jehan uncaps his ballpoint pen and tears a sheet of notebook paper from Grantaire's binder. "I wasn't going to remind you, but you looked pretty out of it during class, so..."

 

"Yeah, just tired. And hungover, like hell." This is mostly untrue but Grantaire figures that a little white lie is okay. He leafs through more of the Political Science textbook, quickly determining that it's going to be a thoroughly miserable year. Barring, of course, one redeemable quality.

 

"Did it have anything to do with the teacher?" Jehan, who has occupied himself with inking a sunflower on Éponine's forearm, doesn't look up.

 

Grantaire grits his teeth. "No."

 

Jehan makes a low hum of what sounds like dissent, but doesn’t say anything. Grantaire digs his thumbs into his temples and tries to will his headache away. It’s continued through the afternoon, and although they’ve got a block of free time last period he feels like shit.

 

“He’s hot though,” Éponine says, “right?”

 

It’s more of a prompt than anything—she’d never fall for anyone other than Pontmercy, Grantaire thinks drily—and a sly dig, something she figures will make him confess.

 

“He’s an okay teacher. Probably a real dick, though.”

 

“You shouldn’t be negative,” Jehan says, without acerbity. They both know that Grantaire’s probably earned the right to be a little negative. Then, to Éponine: “I think he’s beautiful.”

 

“You think everyone’s beautiful,” Grantaire says, but doesn’t protest when Jehan, having finished Éponine’s flower, leans across the table to draw on Grantaire’s arm.

 

“I guess I’m just nervous,” he admits, very softly, not because he particularly wants to but because it feels right, and he feels safe with Éponine and Jehan, and he’s never been a very private person, anyways. “I feel like this year—hell, like this term—is gonna chew me up.”

 

“It won’t.” Éponine is taking Music Theory notes. When Grantaire looks over he can’t make sense of them. It’s like she’s writing in another language. “Not if you don’t let it.”

 

It’s not that easy, he thinks. It’s like letting yourself drown. Drowning makes him think, strangely, of blue eyes and blond hair. He shakes his head but it hurts the space behind his eyes.

 

“We’ll always be here for you,” Jehan says, so softly that Grantaire thinks it must be true. As if following some cosmic cue the bell screams, and Grantaire grits his teeth against the sound. Jehan pulls away to gather his bookbag, and when Grantaire looks down at his arm he sees that Jehan’s drawn a firing rifle. Instead of bullets, the gun is shooting flowers.

 

__________

  
  


Éponine has Youth Choir after school, so Grantaire kicks it alone to the train station. He’s listening to his music, turned up loud to clashing guitars and air drum (it hurts his ears but it’s better than silence), when someone taps his shoulder.

 

“What?” He says, too loudly, before turning to see Combeferre. Pausing the music, Grantaire throws himself into a tight hug. “Comment vas-tu?”

 

“Okay,” Combeferre says, laughing as they hold each other at arm’s length. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!”

 

“Seems to be happening a lot.” Grantaire doesn’t want to mention that they haven’t seen each other in over a month because Combeferre was pulling late hours at the medical centre internship and Grantaire spent most of the summer getting high or drunk or both at once in stranger’s apartments and most of the time the only familiar faces he saw belonged to Éponine or one of her friends, who became his by default.

 

“So you’ve you been running around with?” Combeferre asks as the train slides into the station. Huffs of warm air chase them inside.

 

“Éponine, mostly. Bahorel, Feuilly. Dunno if you know them.”

 

“I do, I do,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire pretends not to see the lightning-fast flicker of concern behind his eyes. Combeferre embodies, as far as Grantaire is concerned, everything that’s pure and honest in the world. A hard worker, the guy who’s trying so goddamn hard to elevate himself in life that he elevates everyone by proxy, if only momentarily.

 

They ride the train in comfortable silence. Grantaire has pocketed his iPod, doesn’t feel the need to blast music when Combeferre is sitting so close to him. Combeferre’s got a sort of easy handsomeness, the kind that makes you feel alright about everything; Grantaire can’t explain it. He used to have a wicked painful crush on Combeferre, back when they were young and he was confused.

 

They’d grown up next door to each other—or was it just the same street, Grantaire can’t remember—but somewhere close by and they’d spent a childhood full of scraped up knees and bruises together. More often than not, the bruises were induced not by asphalt but by knuckles or open palms. Grantaire remembers limping to Combeferre’s apartment late at night, and Combeferre’s mother was drinking on the balcony with her friends and didn’t notice him come in. Combeferre had taken him into the bathroom and lugged the first aid kit (which he’d assembled himself because his mother didn’t know what to do in emergencies and didn’t like the sight of blood, anyways) down from the hall closet and tended to Grantaire’s split lip and bloody nose. Then he’d hugged him, smelling like soap, and they’d shared his little bed that night, curled up around each other like puppies.

 

The memory bites a little bit but Grantaire ends up smiling, mostly because although the posters on the wall have changed and now there’s a desk and textbooks, he happens to know that Combeferre still has that little bed, which he’s most definitely outgrown by now but his mother can’t afford another and these days everyone’s consoling themselves with one more year until university, anyways.

 

“Our stop,” Combeferre says, standing and bringing Grantaire back to the present. They hurry up the steps, hounded by the foul breath of the station. It’s almost muggy, the kind of nearly-autumn weather that usually clings to the very late summer. Grantaire and Combeferre walk home slowly, discussing in great detail their new classes and teachers. Combeferre does it because he likes to discuss things, and to dissect them verbally, and Grantaire does it because even though it makes him a little ill at ease (because, fuck, he’s got a ton of homework and all these shitty impossible classes…) he likes talking with Combeferre. Anyways, Combeferre never makes a competition of anything, not like some students.

 

Grantaire carefully refrains from mentioning Enjolras. He’s certain that Combeferre wouldn’t pry—it’s just not in his nature—but he’s afraid of what might happen if he starts thinking about Enjolras.

 

So it’s small talk all the way home. When Grantaire leans up to kiss Combeferre’s cheek he can’t stop himself from smiling. It’s a brief respite, but one that he leans into with all he’s got.

 

The apartment is warm and empty, full of yellowed afternoon light. Grantaire’s parents aren’t home and so he spreads his homework out at the kitchen table, struggles through a couple of maths problems before all the numbers are spinning in front of his eyes.

 

He sets maths aside—because it feels trivial, now that he’s accepted that he’s going to fail the course—and digs his Political Science textbook from his backpack. The chapter is unnecessarily convoluted (does it really take, like, twenty fucking pages to discuss the structure of French government? Grantaire doesn’t think so) and the questions at its conclusion craftily worded and multi-step.

 

Obviously, Enjolras is going to be sifting through the homework tomorrow night, reading his student’s answers and determining who will shine the brightest. Grantaire imagines that he’ll end up somewhere near the bottom of the heap.

 

And then he starts imagining what else Enjolras might get up to at night, alone in some shitty apartment out near the banlieue, just the sound of the neighbor’s shower running and Enjolras bent over a kitchen table—no, a desk, he’d have a desk—with his hand down his pants, his cock exposed, touching himself, those deadly lips parted...he’d moan so fucking sweetly, Grantaire knows, he’s sure of it. He realizes that he’s getting hard, and almost unconsciously his hand goes to the front of his pants, presses down, palming himself; he bucks up against the pressure, already aching for any release he might give himself, but hears a key fumble and turn in the lock.

 

He freezes, crosses his legs under the table; that’s near-painful, so he uncrosses them and bends over his homework, focusing very intensely on an ink illustration of a town hall.

 

“What the hell are you doing here?”

 

Grantaire looks up. His mother folds a plastic shopping bag up and crams it into her purse. She’s scowling. Her hair is down, dark and curling over her shoulders; strange, Grantaire thinks, because she usually wears it pulled back tightly, says that curly hair is ugly on women.

 

“Homework.”

 

“What?”

 

“Homework.” He closes the textbook. “I had school today, Maman.”

 

“Oh. It’s back in session, then.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good,” she says, and gives him a cool appraising look. “Keep you out of my way.”

 

“Yeah,” Grantaire murmurs, his heart dropping like a stone. He gathers his books and papers silently, lugs them to his bedroom. He closes the door but his mother’s words chase him around relentlessly, and he can’t focus on Political Science so he calls Éponine. She’s getting off the train in five minutes, so Grantaire grabs a jacket and leaves without telling his mother—he doesn’t think she notices—and jogs down the warm evening street to meet her.

 

___________

  
  


His father comes home late. Maman leaves at seven for her evening shift at the corporate building where she works as a cleaner, and Grantaire watches crap television until the news comes on, and he can’t bear to watch more slow-motion of car bombs (just like that, everything up in the air, how quickly oblivion comes) so he turns it off. He surfs the internet for a while, trying to distract himself, and ends up messaging Combeferre (with an hourlong interruption because Combeferre leaves to help his mother in the kitchen) until it’s nearly eleven o’clock.

 

And then the front door bangs open.

 

got to go, Grantaire pounds out, fingers fumbling on the keyboard, and he slams the computer shut on his desk.

 

His father’s boots always sound too loud on the wooden floor, like they’re going to break through the thin plaster and bring the whole apartment crashing down. Uneven, Grantaire notes, cataloging. Calculating.

 

“Grantaire?”

 

“Oui?”

 

“Où as-tu?” Where are you?

 

“Ici, Papa.” Opening his bedroom door carefully, Grantaire eases out into the hall. His father is unlacing his workboots in the front room.

 

“Smells like smoke in here. You been smoking?”

 

Grantaire shakes his head in quick jerks.

 

“I find butts and I’ll black your eye.”

 

Grantaire can smell the alcohol on him, on his father, thick and syrupy.

 

“I don’t smoke, Papa.”

 

“Look,” his father says, straightening. “The boy’s a liar, too.”

 

____________

 

Grantaire feels about two feet tall.

 

“I’m not a liar,” he says, but that’s a lie, too, and it sticks in his throat. “I’m not—”

 

“What?” His father looks up, eyes gone shiny and hazy with drunkenness and he strips off his denim jacket. He’s carried the smell of the factory into the house, rich and oily, and Grantaire suddenly feels the need to shower. “You say something?”

 

“Non, Papa,” he says, very softly. “Non.”

 

___________

 

He systematically bars any thought of Enjolras from skittering into his peripheral until it’s midnight and he’s in bed, trying and failing to fall asleep. Then the imagines start to creep in, bleeding through the darkness. Enjolras bending his head to suck on Grantaire’s neck, one of those clever hands lifting the waistband of Grantaire’s underwear, sliding inside to wrap around his cock.

 

“Fuck,” Grantaire grits, unwillingly. He’s sprawled on his stomach and he’s horrifyingly aware of his cock pressing against his mattress. “Fuck, fuck.” He grinds down, hard and merciless, thrusting against the mattress until the front of his boxers are wet with precum. Unable to stand it—because, fuck, he likes gratification, okay?—Grantaire raises himself on his right elbow, pushing his boxers down to his thighs. His cock is already slick and he fucks into his fist quickly, no rhythm at all. And he’s sort of dimly aware that he’s trying not to think about Enjolras but it doesn’t work at all and in the instant before he comes he sees blond curly hair and sharp eyes and then he’s moaning low and hoarse—oh god fuck—and coming so hard his whole body shakes.

  
After he cleans his sheets off (which is only mildly embarrassing), Grantaire changes his underwear (cramming the dirty ones into the bottom of his dresser) and lies on his back for a long time. The room is filled with the gray light of very late night, and he can hear the television droning from the front room. It’s a comedy show. His father has passed out there, he knows, with a bottle in his hand, and in the morning he’ll be gone to work but the bottle will still be there, on the floor beside the sagging couch, the bottom still damp with drops of amber liquid.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a majority of these chapters end with really sad and unfulfilling sexual experiences. Will this change in the future? Who knows. Actually, keep reading to find out! You all rock.

 

 _Mercredi_ , Grantaire’s got Political Science first period. He and Éponine, both dog-tired, miss their first train and scurry through the school gates ten minutes late; blessedly, Principal Valjean is holed up in his office and not patrolling the yard in the hopes of snagging latecomers.

 

“ _Merde_ ,” Éponine hisses, pushing up her sweater’s sleeve and glancing at her watch. “ _On est retard_.”

 

“It’s fine,” Grantaire mumbles, leaning hard against the door handle. The classroom falls silent when they enter; Enjolras, standing at the front of the room with roster in hand, fixes them with a disapproving glare.

 

“Late,” is his only comment.

 

“Sorry, sir,” Éponine says, and slides into a seat in the second row.

 

“We missed the train,” Grantaire mutters, dropping his backpack next to his chair. The only vacant seat is next to Brujon, a kid who sweats a lot and doesn’t pay attention. At least, Grantaire thinks bitterly, he won’t look so terrible in comparison.

 

“I’m not looking for excuses,” Enjolras says, looking directly at Grantaire. Grantaire looks away.

 

“Today, we look first at the present, and then the past. As discussed, this is largely how the term will progress: examining our past, then our present, and finally our nation’s future.” Enjolras spins on his heels, the tails of his blazer practically snapping, and lunges to write on the board. French Political Structure. He’s emanating a kind of energy that should be illegal at seven forty-five in the morning. “Homework out, please.”

 

Grantaire’s stomach drops.

 

_Merde. Dieu, merde._

 

Enjolras starts in the first row and walks along it, collecting the papers that students proffer. Grantaire ducks his head. He should care more, should feel nervous and guilty.

 

He doesn’t.

 

“Homework?” Enjolras pauses in front of Grantaire. Grantaire glances up, looks at Enjolras’ empty palm.

 

“I don’t have it.”

 

“May I inquire as to why?”

 

“I didn’t do it.”

 

Enjolras is silent for a moment. Grantaire looks up; their gazes meet. Enjolras’ eyes are frightfully blue, whirlpool blue, and they drag Grantaire in and under.

 

“I see,” he says. “Did you forget?”

 

There’s something soft under his voice; the offer of a way out. An escape, if Grantaire’s smart enough to take it.

 

He doesn’t bite. “I remembered. I just didn’t do it.”

 

“This shows a lack of responsibility, Grantaire. If I’m going to be honest.”

 

Grantaire says, “as if I care.”

 

The words sting his mouth; at once, he knows that he shouldn’t have spoken. Enjolras doesn’t respond, but he shakes his head—barely, a motion so slight Grantaire barely catches it. The tips of his hair are damp. Annoyance sours the image of Enjolras showering, and Grantaire finds himself staring at the chalkboard blankly.

 

Éponine hands in neatly printed homework, two pages of it. She’s practically written a fucking essay about elections, Grantaire notes, and his chest tightens when he sees the corners of Enjolras’ mouth pull into a tight but unmistakable smile. Satisfied with Éponine’s work, of course. Her motivation.

 

Even Brujon’s got his homework. Grantaire watches as Enjolras returns to the board, writes several tenants of early French government, and announces that today they’ll begin discussing the history of government.

 

Feudal systems don’t hold Grantaire’s attention, and he zones out watching Enjolras write on the chalkboard, then spin away from it to lecture, call on students, answer questions, spin back to write again. Imagines the muscles of Enjolras’ back tensing and loosening, how he’d look shirtless—how he’d look fucking Grantaire, how his lips would taste.

 

It’s horribly distracting.

 

“...many lords were, in fact, extremely amoral.” Enjolras leans against the front of his desk, folding his arms. “You may have discussed this in European History, or French History—social structure allowed noblemen to live in debauchery. Though some were kind and honest, a majority took advantage of their inherited rights and land. Abuse of serfs and peasants was common. Women and children, especially the poor, were largely treated as subhuman. Living conditions were very poor. Who can tell me—was there a middle class during this time?”

 

Éponine raises her hand.

 

“Éponine?”

 

“Arguably, Monsieur, no. Although you could say that a middle class did exist by the thirteen hundreds, in previous centuries there was the lower class, farmers and laborers, and an upper class of nobility. That’s not counting the clergy, though. Monks, and the like. And priests were usually really amoral, too, right?”

 

“Not all,” Enjolras says, “generally lower-ranking clergymen lived simplistically. Higher-ranking officials, especially those who lived in cities, were often far more corrupt.”

 

“Even so, the concept of a middle class wasn’t a strong societal norm,” Éponine says, and Enjolras says ‘exactly’, and Grantaire feels a warm rush of jealousy.

 

It’s so fucking easy for them; for Éponine, for Combeferre, for all of them. The words roll off their tongue and cut through the air, crisp, concise: societal norms, amorality. Things that Grantaire would only think of if he read them first, because words like that don’t roll off his tongue naturally, words like that stick in his throat. Slang comes fast and easy; book-speak, not so much.

 

He should take notes but he doesn’t.

 

At the end of class, as Grantaire rises to pack his bag, Enjolras says,

 

“Grantaire, please come see me.”

 

Grantaire crams his binder into his backpack with renewed vigor, caught somewhere between excitement and extreme annoyance. Most of his teachers, having already pegged him as a waste of time, let him avoid homework with impunity.

 

Clearly, Enjolras is of a different breed. When Grantaire approaches his desk Enjolras sits down and steeples his fingers.

 

“I’m going to give you another chance,” he says.

 

Grantaire says, “huh?”.

 

“Another chance,” Enjolras repeats, voice low despite the din of students shuffling out of the classroom. “To redeem yourself, so to speak. I’m not sure why you didn’t feel the need to complete the homework like your classmates, but I won’t ask. All I require is the ten questions, completed and turned in by third period tomorrow.”

 

Grantaire stares. Éponine, who has been lingering by her desk, shoots him a swift sly glance and leaves, Jehan behind her. The last straggling students go out; Grantaire is alone with Enjolras. He’s aware of his heart beating quickly in his chest.

 

“Why?”

 

Enjolras stands up and begins to erase the board, moving his hand in long, sweeping motions. Grantaire wonders, briefly and inappropriately, if Enjolras jerks himself off.

 

“Why? Why should I not?”

 

“Dunno,” he says, and then, because that sounded so fucking stupid, Grantaire, “other teachers don’t.”

 

“I’m not other teachers.” Enjolras claps the eraser down, sits again. Stacks the homework papers. “It’s the beginning of the year, alright? And I’m not in the business of being a hard-ass, if you’ll excuse my language.”

 

Grantaire pauses in front of the desk, then hitches his backpack higher on his shoulders. He turns to leave; Enjolras doesn’t stop him. At the door, he turns back.

 

“You shouldn’t, you know.”

 

Enjolras does not look up from his papers. “Shouldn’t what?”

 

“Give me a second chance.” Grantaire nearly laughs, though nothing’s remotely funny. “I’m a screwup. I’ll never be anything else.”

 

He leaves before Enjolras has a chance to respond.

 

________________

 

“Fuck,” Combeferre says.

 

“Wow.” Éponine looks up from her sheet music. “You’ve got a dirty mouth today.”

 

“I mean it, too. This is bull.” Combeferre leafs through his homework; sheafs of paper full of instructions. “I should have dropped this class. I knew I’d regret it, too, the minute Brun started to review the syllabus. I’ve never had such a fucking boring teacher.”

 

“Philosophy?” Grantaire glances over the papers. It’s all but nonsense to him; jargon he can’t understand, concepts that are utterly and infuriatingly baffling.

 

“You’re brave,” Éponine mutters. “I’d never have signed up for it in the first place. Brun is famous for being a proper dick.”

 

“No kidding.” Combeferre returns to writing his paper.

 

That’s it, Grantaire thinks, with a sort of dull clarity. That's the difference between Combeferre and Grantaire. No matter how difficult or unfair it is, Combeferre keeps working. They both do.

 

The café is noisy around them, full of students working and talking and idling, and Éponine’s leg is pressed warm against his own, but Grantaire’s never felt more alone.

 

_____________

  
  


In a shocking turn of events, Grantaire actually does his homework. It’s kind of a foreign concept, sitting down at the table and spreading his stuff out and forcing himself to concentrate even though it’s boring as hell and more than a little confusing.

 

He consoles himself with texting Éponine every ten minutes, arranging to meet at six o’clock on the fire escape outside his bedroom window.

 

The questions are dull but Grantaire pushes through them, aware that his handwriting looks absolutely abysmal. He thinks about Enjolras grading this homework, just his, and no one else’s, bent over the kitchen table in an apartment somewhere, maybe shirtless in the late-summer heat, and instead of getting hard Grantaire just feels kind of empty and lonely. He’s glad when he finishes (and what a weird feeling of relief there is!) and he goes to duck through his bedroom window and onto the fire escape.

 

Éponine arrives several minutes later, breathless, scrambling up to perch beside him. She toes her shoes off and leans against the apartment’s hard stucco, breathing hard.

 

“Want a cig?” Grantaire taps one out, offers her the pack.

 

“Alright,” she says. “I have some weed, if you want, for later.”

 

They smoke the cigarettes in comfortable silence. Grantaire drifts in and out of half-daydreams. The glow of dusk purples the neighborhood. A dog yowls in the near distance.

 

“So,” Éponine says, breaking the silence, flicking flakes of rust from the fire escape, watching them spiral three stories to the ground. “What did Enjolras want?”

 

“Just the homework thing,” Grantaire murmurs, tapping ash from the end of his cigarette. He puts it between his teeth and inhales hard.

 

“Nothing else.”

 

“You pervert, ‘Ponine!” Grantaire mock-shoves her, letting laughter roll from his mouth. “God, you’re hopeless, it was just the homework, I don’t even think he’s so—”

 

“Beautiful?” Éponine mimes swooning, batting her eyelashes.

 

“That offer still stand?” Grantaire says, “For the pot, I mean.”

 

Rolling her eyes heartily, Éponine fishes a plastic baggie from her pocket. It’s quality product. They roll a joint and pass it back and forth between them.

 

“Where’d you get it?” Grantaire asks, already knowing the answer.

 

“Montparnasse.” Éponine sucks in, holds the smoke a moment, lets it billow out over her full lips.

 

Grantaire huffs.

 

“What?” She presses her lips together, hands him the joint. Wears a sudden air of vague disapproval. “If you don’t like it, don’t smoke it.”

 

“It’s not the…I don’t like—it’s him I don’t—trust, you know.” Grantaire swallows a deep lungful. “He’s, like, this...always wearing dark clothes and he’s good-looking and...like, slick. You know? Like a cat.”

 

“Sure.”

 

Grantaire feels tired and slow; in a good way, though, like time is stretching out around them and it’s nice, he’s not worried, his mind doesn’t wander towards school. He feels okay.

 

“But,” Éponine says, and pets his knee gently, “I don’t give a fuck what you think.”

 

Grantaire scoffs and tries to nudge her away. His mind is moving slowly but it’s not like he can’t think. He sees Montparnasse’s smug face swimming before his own, thin and rakish, dressed in a sleek dark street style (lots of blazers and leather jackets and jeans that are far too tight) and looking a hell of a lot like a stray cat.

 

He’s dimly aware of saying, “whatever.”

 

“Yeah,” Éponine says. The silence settles around them. A group of young boys in baseball caps and jerseys pass beneath the window, shoving at each other and talking loudly. Their shouts drift up, like they’re cartoon characters whose voices have broken free of speech bubbles. Grantaire laughs even though nothing’s funny, not really.

 

They pass the joint back and forth until it’s almost dark and the streetlights are coming on. The sounds of neighbors cooking dinner emanate from apartments: rattling and clanking and someone’s mother ordering them into the kitchen to help, now.

 

Éponine gets a text from Gavroche at six forty-five, and leaves suddenly without explanation. It doesn’t take much for Grantaire to infer that the kid has gotten himself into some kind of legal trouble again; he’d been in handcuffs before his tenth birthday, and now at thirteen is still running relatively wild. Éponine throws promises over her shoulder as she departs; they’ll go out tomorrow, she says, shinnying down the fire escape, and have themselves a fucking riot.

 

___________

 

“Here,” Grantaire says, pushing through Enjolras’ classroom door halfway through lunchtime. “I did the homework.”

 

Enjolras is sitting at his desk, grading papers. Without looking up, he says, “ _merci_.”

 

“ _De rien_ ,” Grantaire says, and then _how stupid_. “Yeah.” That wasn’t much better, was it?

 

“I’m glad to see you applying yourself.”

 

“Don’t get all excited,” Grantaire mutters, shoving his hands into his pockets. Enjolras looks up, and his gaze cuts through Grantaire. Like the edge of a knife, so clean and cool it would go through you and you wouldn’t half notice it.

 

“I don’t think that’s appropriate language for a classroom,” Enjolras says, and _fuck fuck fuck_ is he staring at Grantaire’s lips?

 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, but he’s barely aware of his mouth moving. “I—sorry.”

 

Their gazes snag and hold. Grantaire is suddenly hyper-aware; he’s a deer caught in the proverbial headlights, an expression he’s found incredibly stupid until this very moment.

 

“Well,” Enjolras says, and holds his hand out. “Thank you, Grantaire.”

 

Grantaire stares dumbly.

 

Enjolras says, “ _ton devoirs_?”

 

Your homework.

 

“Yeah. Right.” Grantaire thrusts the page out with a hand whose trembling he can barely disguise. He’s certain that Enjolras notices, feels his cheeks warm with an embarrassed blush.

 

“ _Merci_ ,” Enjolras says, still looking at Grantaire—and Grantaire isn’t sure if it’s an expression of mild concern on Enjolras’ face but it sure as hell is hot.

 

“See you…in class…” Grantaire swallows with difficulty. The corners of Enjolras’ mouth twitch into a maybe-smile, a half-smile that sets Grantaire’s heart hammering.

 

“See you in class, Grantaire.”

 

And Enjolras turns back to grading papers, and Grantaire flees from the classroom with his face burning.

 

“What’s wrong?” Éponine asks when he rejoins them in the cafeteria. “You don’t look good.”

 

“Nothing,” Grantaire swears, and stares at his hands. They’re trembling, a kind of tremble that only Grantaire can see, because only he’s looking hard enough, or maybe only he’s looking in the right way…

 

“You sure?” Feuilly (one of Jehan’s compatriotes, a gentle curly-haired kid who Grantaire doesn’t know well) leans across the table. “No offense, man, but you look sick.”

 

“I’m fine.” His hands are still trembling and when he thinks about the way that Enjolras had smiled he feels a little dizzy. “Really. Fine.”

 

_____________

 

Grantaire drifts through the rest of the day in a spectacularly good mood, steeling himself for last period Political Science.

 

Éponine is in a piss-poor mood after taking a maths test (“ _it was fucking impossible_ ”) and as she and Grantaire slide into first-row seats she vows to get thoroughly shitfaced as soon as possible.

 

But the vortex of Enjolras’ speaking pulls Grantaire in, and he has no desire to claw his way out. His mind is a live wire; hot to the touch, oversensitive. When Enjolras, lecturing on the premise of the French Revolution, mentions overthrowing the bourgeoisie, Grantaire scoffs aloud.

 

“Do you have something to add, Grantaire?” Enjolras folds his arms, ceasing—momentarily—his pacing.  The rest of the class is silent. Grantaire feels their eyes on him. Éponine turns to stare—he sees her in his peripheral, rolling her eyes.

 

“Only that you seem to know a lot about the bourgeoisie, sir.”

 

Éponine huffs a sigh. Enjolras arches his right eyebrow. Folds his arms a little tighter, the muscles of his forearms shifting visibly beneath rolled-up shirtsleeves.

 

“Okay,” he says, “I’ll bite.”

 

“I was just wondering. Where are you from, anyways?”

 

“France,” Enjolras says, without missing a beat. “Same as most of you, presumably.”

 

“That was heterocultural of you,” Grantaire says boldly, unsure of whether ‘heterocultural’ is a word or not. It sounds like something that Éponine might say—or, better yet, Jehan—and he likes that. He likes that Enjolras presses his lips together a little harder.

 

It shouldn’t make him happy like this, shouldn’t get a fucking rise out of him but this is Grantaire, this is who he is, this is the only way that he knows how to get a goddamn reaction out of people, it’s pissing them off and they pay attention, they pay some fucking attention to him when he ticks them off and it’s been working against him since he was five years old but by God he’s not about to stop now.

 

“Note the use of the word ‘majority’. If I read your comment correctly, you’re suggesting that I come from a more privileged background than many—perhaps most—students in this classroom.”

 

“You went to university,” Grantaire says. “That’s enough to put you above all of us. Most of our parents, too.”

 

Someone in the back calls, “my parents both went to university!”, and there’s a brief murmur of agreement— _only my dad, but my mom’s no idiot either_ —that dies down quickly.

 

“It’s true,” Enjolras says. He shifts backwards to lean against his desk, and Grantaire tries to stare him down without staring him down. “I went to university. Without attending university, I wouldn’t be standing in front of you right now.”

 

_And what a terrible shame that would be. What a tragedy._

 

The words are on Grantaire’s lips before he realizes that they’d be taken at face value, sarcastically, and Enjolras would think him cruel and incredibly stupid, and Grantaire would _feel_ cruel and incredibly stupid.

 

“All I’m saying is,” and he leans in his chair, hands palms-up on the desk. “Most of us don’t come from rich families like yourself.”

 

Enjolras lift his chin, a slight motion that jolts Grantaire—he’s reminded, suddenly and brutally, of the way that he used to face down schoolyard bullies. Alternatively, the way that Éponine jerks her chin up when she’s ready for a fight.

 

“What makes you think that I’m rich?”

 

The way that you look at us, Grantaire thinks.

 

“Just the way you act,” he says, vaguely. Someone (Brujon?) murmurs in agreement, but doesn’t raise their voice loud enough to be properly heard.

 

“That’s fair.” Enjolras nods. He sucks, briefly, on his lower lip—a movement that makes Grantaire want to moan out loud—and unfolds his arms. “It’s true. I won’t lie to you—to any of you, in fact. I’m not ashamed of my background, though that’s taken some time to affirm. I realize that the reality is that,” and he pauses for a millisecond, something that Grantaire isn’t sure anyone else picks up on, “that my adolescence was spent very differently than many of you. We come from different worlds.”

 

Grantaire thinks that Enjolras is done, will want to drop the subject and leave it at that, but he plunges further. Every word drags Grantaire down a little more.

 

“Many of you may view me differently now. Perhaps some had an inkling that I came from a wealthy background. I speak formally when lecturing, for example. I refrain from using slang. But I hope that none of you will see me as any the lesser for it. For many years I considered my privilege to be a burden. I can tell you all very honestly that my economic situation has changed since childhood, and that now my income is as much as any other teacher’s—that is to say, not much.”

 

A few titters, maybe nervous laughter but it sets Grantaire’s teeth on edge.

 

“This isn’t meant to make anyone uncomfortable. I realize that economic matters are often taboo, kept quiet. All I’m saying is that Grantaire brought up a relevant point. I grew up with money. Things have changed, though...much as economics shifted radically during the French Revolution, which brings us to our next point…”

 

And with that, it’s over. Enjolras turns back to the board to continue writing. The class commences notetaking. Enjolras lectures about economic policy in the years leading up to the French Revolution, which Grantaire doesn’t understand, and Enjolras doesn’t so much as look Grantaire’s way for the rest of the lesson.

 

_______________

  
  


They go their separate ways at the train station at three-thirty, and reconvene at the same place three hours later. It’s cold by six, and Grantaire shivers in his leather jacket (a thrift-store relic that Jehan swore made him look mysterious and sexy). He can’t fathom why Éponine’s turned up in a skimpy dress and heels, because the dress hasn’t got any sleeves and holy hell she must be fucking freezing.

 

“You look hot,” he tells her, more of a default than anything, because he thinks she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen, probably the most beautiful girl in the world. Grantaire has never actually explicitly voiced this and he nearly does as they pay their fares, but then Montparnasse shows up and all the spark goes out of Grantaire.

 

“Hey, babe,” Montparnasse says, slinking up to Éponine and curling an arm around her shoulders. He throws a smirk in Grantaire’s direction. “Got any smokes?”

 

“Who the fuck says ‘smokes’?” Grantaire gripes, but taps three cigarette out of his packet. They all light up and smoke on the train, even though an old woman in a headscarf glares at them. Grantaire feels stabs of—something—when Montparnasse sits with his arm around Éponine, because he sits like he owns her. It’s not quite jealousy, but Grantaire feels like Éponine is closer than a sister, is closer than a best friend.

 

Nobody gets to touch her like that, he thinks. Nobody gets to touch her like she’s their property.

 

But Montparnasse makes Éponine laugh and her lipstick is the color of blood and when they get off the train in the 17th arrondissement the two of them walk ahead of Grantaire. He’s happy to fall back.

 

The party’s in a basement apartment, and Grantaire gets lost in the shuffle of feet and bodies and sweat. Music throbs and he thinks he recognizes the song. Someone presses a drink into his hand and Grantaire thanks them blindly before realizing that it’s Bahorel. They kiss each other’s cheeks and then Bahorel’s vanished into the press of the crowd and Grantaire lingers alone in a hallway with a concrete floor.

 

A couple start kissing next to him and he looks away.

 

“This is a hell of a party.” A blond guy with high cheekbones and tight pants materializes at Grantaire’s side and he starts. “Sorry,” the guy says. “Wasn’t trying to scare you.”

 

“It’s fine.” Grantaire drinks a little more. It’s not enough, he thinks. He needs to get wasted in every sense of the word. He looks at the blond guy. He’s got curly hair. Grantaire feels a little sick. “Want some—vodka, or something? I can find some?”

 

“Love it,” the guy says, and Grantaire goes off and finds some vodka on a card table because someone’s left a bottle unattended (and he sees a girl who he thinks is probably the owner bent double in the corner) and he figures that it’s their mistake and takes it.

 

There’s a dim room with a couch and a lot of people smoking weed, and Grantaire lets the blond guy pull him in and they sit on the floor and drink the vodka and it gets passed around but keeps coming to Grantaire, and he smokes some of a joint. The music is swallowing everything up then, and he lets the blond guy kiss him, and nobody says anything and he doesn’t see anyone he knows (and Éponine and Bahorel won’t mind and Montparnasse is a slick dickhead but has disappeared, so…) and the guy puts a hand on Grantaire’s pants and says let’s get out of here and Grantaire lets the guy lead him down the hall into an unlit bathroom with an open window.

 

It’s cold in there and the guy grinds against Grantaire until they’re both hard and Grantaire fumbles the guy’s belt off, zipper down.

 

“Wait,” the guy says, but Grantaire doesn’t wait, he’s already on his knees. He licks up the guy’s cock and the guy gasps and says, “Yeah, yeah”, and Grantaire flicks his tongue over the tip and the guy gasps again, louder, and pushes Grantaire’s head down. He’s good at doing this, mostly because he likes to make other people feel good. His eyes water because the guy is pushing his cock so far down Grantaire’s throat but Grantaire doesn’t pull away, he takes it, and when the guy bucks his hips up and fucks Grantaire’s mouth Grantaire lets him. Then he pulls away and spits on the guy’s cock and uses his hand, too, and his mouth goes other places, and the guy starts moaning and throwing his head back and when Grantaire looks up all he sees is Enjolras.

 

“Harder,” the guy says, “yeah, harder, fuck, don’t stop.”

 

Grantaire runs his tongue up the front of the guy’s cock and that seems to push him over the edge, he comes into Grantaire’s mouth, pushing down on Grantaire’s head, fingers tangled in his hair, and Grantaire moans and the guy says “fuck” and that turns Grantaire on more than anything.

 

The guy pulls him to his feet and kisses him. Grantaire kisses back, his mouth salty, sticky. The guy slides his hand into Grantaire’s pants, and Grantaire has a brief flash of this isn’t supposed to happen before the guy’s hand is around his cock. He arches up into the touch, pulling the guy’s shirtfront, forgetting that this isn’t supposed to happen (because he doesn’t know where Éponine is and he should be out there drinking and dancing and not in here sucking cock…).

 

“You’re so hard,” the guy says, which should be a turn-off because it’s so painfully cliché but Grantaire sort of moans and the guy spits into his hand but he doesn’t need to because Grantaire’s cock is already wet with precum. The guy starts jerking Grantaire off and the feeling is intensified by a thousand times, hundred thousand, maybe it’s being drunk maybe it’s being high but Grantaire actually fucking jumps, writhes under the guy’s touch, a loose cry escaping his lips.

 

“Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he’s backed up against the counter and the guy’s jerking him off fast and merciless, and Grantaire puts his face against the guy’s neck, blond curly hair and a stranger’s shoulders, and when he imagines that it’s Enjolras’ hand everything goes blurry.

 

The guy’s other hand is in Grantaire’s pants, too, and Grantaire doesn’t realize what he’s doing until the guy is pushing a finger fucking inside him and he cries out again and starts, twisting, and the guy is, like, moving his finger or something but it’s something that sets stars off behind Grantaire’s eyelids and he’s moaning so loud, his cock is so fucking hard oh god oh god oh god. The guy whispers something but Grantaire can’t hear him and doesn’t care because he’s about to come and the guy does something with his hand and Grantaire comes hard, the hardest he’s come in a while, shouting wordlessly and convulsing against the guy. He cries _Enjolras_ when he comes, sees blond hair and stars and he’s aware of letting out a kind of sob.

 

“Stop,” he says, because it’s over in an instant and his cock is throbbing and the guy is still jerking him off. “Stop, stop,” but the guy’s hand is still wrapped around Grantaire’s cock. He slides his finger out of Grantaire but he rubs his thumb over the head of Grantaire’s cock and Grantaire almost fucking _screams_ because it hurts but it’s a good kind of pain.

 

“How old are you?”

 

“Eighteen,” Grantaire lies, writhing. “Fucking stop, man, _t'arrête_ , come on, fuck, fuck, stop…”

 

“Liar,” the guy says. “You’re seventeen, max.”

 

“It hurts,” Grantaire says.

 

“Good.” The guy’s practically got him held against the counter, pressing him there with his shoulder, and Grantaire is aware that his cum is all over the guy’s hand and everything’s slick and the guy won’t stop touching him.

 

“I’m s-serious, stop, s-stop, fucking stop please.”

 

The guy gives one last jerk—a slow motion that sends Grantaire’s hips bucking and a wavering shout from his lips—and pulls his hand away.

 

“You’re cute when you’re in pain,” he says. “Call me.”

 

Then he takes a pen out of his pocket and writes a number on Grantaire’s arm and leaves.

 

Grantaire cleans himself off with toilet tissue and then bends over, leaning his forehead against the cool countertop for a long, long time. Outside, music throbs; people are talking and laughing and shouting.

 

Even with his eyes closed, he can see Enjolras’ face.

 

___________

 

In the first weak light of early morning they walk back to the train station. Grantaire has thrown up in the gutter outside the apartment building and he feels weak and empty.

 

Montparnasse walks with his arm around Éponine’s shoulders, the way snakes curl up around prey.

 

The train ride home is silent. Éponine falls asleep with her head on Grantaire’s shoulder. His head is pounding; he pushes up his jacket sleeve and looks at the number scrawled on his forearm.

 

“What’s that?” Éponine asks, her voice quiet and sleepy. She sounds like a little kid.

 

“Nothing,” Grantaire says, and pushes his sleeve down again.

 

___________

 

He spends Saturday at Éponine’s place. Her mother is working at the hostel near the university, because Saturday is a big check-in day. Monsieur Thénardier has been detained by the police under suspicion for something (something, Grantaire thinks drily, that he’s probably guilty of), so the Thénardier kids have the flat to themselves.

 

It’s small and shabby but the place is bright and Azelma goes round opening every window til the flat is full of light and street noise. Grantaire and Éponine fall asleep together on the couch and he wakes up at noon, limbs tangled around Éponine’s, a sour taste in his mouth. His headache is gone. Azelma is in the kitchen, banging pots and pans around. Grantaire gets up and goes into the little bathroom down the hall. Gavroche is sitting on the countertop, carefully inking a washable-marker skull and crossbones on his forearm.

 

“I’m thinking of getting a tattoo,” he says when Grantaire comes in.

 

“Don’t,” Grantaire advises. He takes a piss and then washes his face and puts some of Éponine’s toothpaste on his finger and brushes his teeth. Gavroche continues to draw the skull and crossbones, but he keeps looking at Grantaire with a funny expression, like he’s about to say something.

 

Finally Grantaire says, “spit it out”.

 

“You don’t look good,” Gavroche says. “Is all.”

 

Grantaire fills his cupped hands with lukewarm tapwater. Splashes his face, looks at his reflection in the mirror. Through dripping eyelashes, he’s pallid, the faint freckles on his cheeks and nose surprisingly prominent. There are dark circles under his eyes, like he’s been either sleep-deprived or punched. His lips are chapped.

 

He says, “I’m fine, Gavroche.”

  
He thinks, _I feel like I’m drowning_.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, folks! i'm really excited that people are liking this fic! just wanted to say that i've gotten a couple of comments about the french (especially grammatical errors) and its misuse. i haven't been studying french for long, and as speakers know it's a very difficult language to learn. i really appreciate getting feedback about any mistakes i've made and will try to go back and edit this upcoming weekend! i'm really glad that you're enjoying reading as much as i'm enjoying writing, and that those who speak french are kind enough to point out mistakes/errors! you're fantastic, readers!

He spends Saturday night on Éponine’s couch, sweating in the familiar dark of her front room. Gavroche sleeps curled up on the armchair beside Grantaire, having collapsed there after murmuring that he’d rather sleep outside than share a bedroom with his brothers. Sunday morning they scrounge in the Thénardier’s bedroom for spare change and fill their pockets with what they can find. Grantaire and Éponine and Azelma and little Marc walk down to the bakery on the corner and buy bread and pastries, paying with vast handfuls of coins that they shove over the counter. Éponine flirts with the boy behind the counter and while he’s counting out the coins Grantaire and Marc cram breakfast rolls under their jackets.

 

When they get back Azelma gets out a plastic plate and they put the rolls on it and open all the windows to let some air into the apartment, and sit in the front room on the floor. They all pass the bread around along with some jam that Azelma either found or shoplifted but it’s good and the youngest Thénardier boy—Jean, only six—climbs in Grantaire’s lap and Grantaire helps him put jam on the bread and he doesn’t feel sick or sad or empty at all.

 

“Okay?” Éponine asks, maybe because she knows Grantaire well enough to read him.

 

“Fine,” he says, and laughs for the first time in days. “Yeah, fine, really.”

 

_____________

 

Sunday evening, Grantaire walks home under a bleeding sky. The eastern clouds are maroon, the air hot and still, as before a storm.

 

He’s sweating by the time he mounts the stairs, can hear the neighbors blasting a football game at top volume.

 

He should have known. He should have noticed the unlocked door, should have shaken himself out of the hungover stupor and thought a little bit, god dammit, Grantaire—

 

Should have noticed his father before he does.

 

“I thought you were working today.”

 

“Day off. Some Union shit.” His father is sitting on the couch, weirdly upright, like a statue. He stares at Grantaire. He barely moves, barely blinks. “And where the fuck-all have you been?”

 

“At—” Éponine’s name slips under his tongue. Grantaire’s father despises Thénardier (an opinion not uncommon in the neighborhood, or, in fact, most of Paris) and gave Grantaire a wicked beating last time he confessed to having spent a weekend chez Éponine. “At a friend’s.”

 

“What friend?”

 

Grantaire’s gaze snags on the empties around the couch cushions, on the worn-thin carpet. He watches his father tap a cigarette from the packet in his chest pocket, light it. Inhale. Exhale.

 

“Jehan. Jean. A school friend.”

 

“A school friend.” Another exhale, the smoke curling up towards the ceiling. Grantaire removes his jacket, hangs it on the peg inside the door. His father’s words are slurred, strung together, smoothing out into a flat line, the way they sound when he’s had too much to drink, and Grantaire feels a little sick. “Tell me,” his father says, and taps ash from the end of the cigarette. “Are you a faggot?”

 

...and Grantaire’s stomach drops through the fucking floor.

 

His first thought is something along the lines of fuck, and his second: how did he know?

 

“No,” he says, in the tone of a boy who has just been insulted deeply and personally. “Fuck, no.”

 

“You act like one.”

 

Suddenly, Grantaire is twelve years old again, on the schoolyard, taunted and shoved and his jumper pulled away from his shoulders, a bully’s fist tightening around his wrist.

 

“Please,” he says, and his voice is quieter than he’d meant for it to be. “Don’t talk like that.”

 

“My house. I’ll talk how I fucking please.” His father inhales sharply, cheeks sucking in. “You’re always fucking around with these school friends, these guys.” He says guys but means something else. “You know what I think of faggots?”

 

Grantaire says yes but his father breaks in, loud and slurred, and pulls the cigarette away from his mouth.

 

“I’d sooner fuckin’ shoot myself than fuck ‘ound ‘ith that lot.”

 

“Stop!” Grantaire cries, before he can stop himself; he’s thinking about Jehan and about the blond guy at the party and about Enjolras and about anyone but himself, and—

 

“Yeah.” His father stands, reels a little. “You fucking ingrate, you know ‘at?”

 

“Don’t,” Grantaire says, but the words come out high and breathy and holy shit he doesn’t expect his father to move so fast, across the room and pushing Grantaire up against the wall, alcohol-smelling breath hot in Grantaire’s face.

 

All he says is faggot, the word rank against Grantaire’s cheek.

 

The air in the apartment is still: the moment before the lightning strike.

 

“Fuck you!” Grantaire hisses, almost without meaning to, the words on his tongue. He feels his father pull back but doesn’t see the fist, not until it collides hard and fast and exploding against the side of his face. And then everything’s a blur of heat and knuckles and Grantaire feels his lip split and cries out, and his head slams backward against the wall, and then he’s shoving his father away, the smell of alcohol and sweat, and he’s grabbing a denim jacket from the peg on the wall, yanking it over his shoulders.

 

He goes out of apartment and doesn’t look back.

 

____________

 

There are a few euro in the pocket, and a lighter and two cigarettes. Grantaire lights one with shaking hands as he goes downstairs, passing narrow dim hallways that smell like boiled meat and too many people living too close together.

 

It’s raining outside. Grantaire passes one hand over his mouth. He tastes iron, and his knuckles come away bloody.

 

The storm’s broken.

 

___________

 

He walks for a long time in the rain.

 

There are so many streets and neon signs and passing cars, and after a while they blur together. He’s dimly aware that it’s getting late but he doesn’t care.

 

Thirsty and hungry and aching, he stops at a sidewalk café, five minutes from closing time.

 

“Un café,” he mutters, and fumbles in his pocket for the money. The vendor is a short man with a very red face and thick eyeglasses who looks briefly and coolly at Grantaire’s proffered money.

 

“That’s not enough.”

 

“What?” Grantaire swallows. He can see the coffee brewing behind the counter. He realizes, dully, that he hasn’t eaten since this morning.

 

“You’re short. Sorry.” The vendor turns away.

 

“Grantaire?”

 

He turns, is blinded momentarily, brilliantly.

 

Fuck.

 

“I didn’t—” he’s not even sure what he’s going to say, because the words latch in his throat, but Enjolras strides forward off the rainy sidewalk, pushing down the hood of a scarlet sweatshirt.

 

“Grantaire, what are you—” he pauses, says, “...doing?”

 

“I’m short,” Grantaire says dumbly, holding up the money.

 

“Two euro,” the vendor adds, looking at Grantaire with unmistakable accusation. Grantaire wonders briefly if the man thinks he’s homeless, or a junkie.

 

“I’ll pay.” Enjolras fishes in his pocket, comes up with a handful of money.

 

“You don’t have to—”

 

“Really.” Even in the street’s semidarkness Enjolras is luminous. His hair is damp. Grantaire’s eyes ache, or maybe it’s the beginnings of a bruise. He accepts his coffee and puts his face over the plastic cup’s lid, inhaling fragrant steam.

 

“Thank you,” he says, and is embarrassed because he’s pretty sure that he’s blushing furiously. “For the…”

 

“You’re shaking,” Enjolras says.

 

“Oh. Yeah.” Grantaire nearly laughs, though nothing is remotely funny. He realizes that yes, Enjolras is right, he’s trembling all over.

 

“You should sit down, Grantaire.” Enjolras puts a hand on Grantaire’s shoulder—god, his touch is fucking electric—and guides Grantaire to a wooden bench on the sidewalk. Grantaire sits, realizes that the rain’s abated, become a light and pervasive mist.

 

His lip is throbbing, still feels hot from the punch. He’s certain that he’s got blood on his teeth—or maybe he hasn’t, maybe he’s just paranoid, although he realizes in the same moment that he doesn’t really care all that much.

 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, softly, and his voice is so, so warm. “Grantaire, what happened to your face?”

 

“You calling me ugly?” Grantaire puts the cigarette back between his lips. Then he drops his head. “I got into with my old man.”

 

“Your father did this to you?” Enjolras sounds horrified. Grantaire wants to laugh; surely Enjolras, the great proponent of justice, must know about what some of his students go through at home?

 

“You sound surprised.”

 

“I am,” Enjolras says, with the air of a confession. “Your mouth is bleeding badly. And you’re going to have a nasty black eye tomorrow.”

 

“I’ve had worse.”

 

Enjolras turns away. He passes a hand over his mouth.

 

“May I ask what the...altercation...was about?”

 

Grantaire pauses for a beat. No, he thinks.

 

“We were arguing about one of my friends.”

 

“I see.”

 

No, you don’t see. No one does. Grantaire feels like he’s breaking, drowning again. That’s the point.

 

He drinks some more of the coffee and tries not to look at Enjolras for too long. He didn’t imagine that it would happen like this; that being this close to Enjolras would be on a bench while his lip is bleeding and his right eye is aching and he’s sad and angry and it’s starting to rain again.

 

“Where are you going to go tonight?” Enjolras asks, and Grantaire’s first question is where he learned to ask that, because that’s something you say to someone who you know can’t go home.

 

“Not my place, that’s for sure.” He already knows, though. “A friend’s place. It’s close, actually. Walking distance.”

 

“I’ll walk you,” Enjolras says at once. Grantaire’s insides freeze up.

 

Holy shit.

 

“You don’t have to.”

 

“I want to.”

 

They stare at each other. The taste of blood in Grantaire’s mouth is hot and metallic, and he’s looking at Enjolras, all silver and gold in the light from the streetlamp and Enjolras is looking at him.

 

“It isn’t safe,” Enjolras says, and stands up. “I’d just feel better knowing that you got to your friend’s place safely.”

 

“Okay,” Grantaire says, softly. “That’s. Uh. Nice of you.”

 

“I’m not being nice,” Enjolras says with conviction. “I’m being responsible. There’s a difference.”

 

“Sure.” Grantaire’s also sure that he could search for a witty comeback, but he figures it would only make the moment awkward.

 

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this is abuse,” Enjolras says as they begin to walk. Grantaire shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

 

“It’s not that bad. Not like those adverts they’re always showing, with the crying poor kids. Call this number if your neighbor beats their eight year-old, shit like that. Plenty of parents rough their kids up from time to time.”

 

“They shouldn’t.”

 

“Yeah, well. People do a lot of stuff they shouldn’t.” There’s an accidental bite to Grantaire’s words, and he falls silent. “Sorry.”

 

Enjolras doesn’t respond, but he kind of huffs; a sound that’s almost a humorless laugh.

 

“What?”

 

“You mystify me, Grantaire.” Enjolras shakes his head in a gesture of what Grantaire pegs as disbelief. “In class you play the hardened cynic, but I don’t think that that’s who you really are.”

 

They’ve reached familiar streets now. Grantaire stops at the corner. In the wan light Enjolras looks statuesque, like the marbles that they’ve learned about in Art History. But his face is more—gentle. More human.

 

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, and means it with every fiber of his being. “But you don’t know me.”

 

He speaks earnestly, trying to say I think you’re beautiful and perfect and I want you to like me without actually saying it. He turns and hikes up the sloping street, pavement slick and shiny under his feet. When he turns back, Enjolras is gone.

 

_____________

 

“Fuck,” Combeferre says upon opening the door. And then, “come in, come in.”

 

He stands back and ushers Grantaire into the flat.

 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, feeling thoroughly shitty. “I know it’s last minute, but…”

 

“Don’t apologize. Christ,” Combeferre puts a hand under Grantaire’s chin, gently tilting his head. “Your lip is cut really badly.”

 

“My dad was wearing a ring.”

 

Their eyes meet as Grantaire says this, and Combeferre’s gaze is brokenly sad.

 

“I’m sure he was,” he says softly, and ushers Grantaire through the cramped front room (Combeferre’s little sisters are watching a cartoon show on the TV and wave at Grantaire) and into the bathroom.

 

“So, what happened?” Combeferre asks when Grantaire is settled on the counter and they’re at eye level again.

 

“I came home and he was sitting there drunk off his ass, the fucker.”

 

“Hold on.” Combeferre leans over and closes the door. “Little pitchers,” he says, and Grantaire remembers Combeferre’s little sisters and feels shittier.

 

“Sorry.”

 

“It’s fine. Go on.”

 

“We got into it about something. He kept saying, like, ‘faggot’ and shit.”

 

“I’m sorry.” Combeferre sticks a plaster over Grantaire’s cheekbone, a place he hadn’t even realized was cut. “No one deserves to hear that.”

 

“Yeah, well.”

 

“I mean it,” Combeferre says, putting antiseptic on a paper towel. He presses it to the corner of Grantaire’s lip and Grantaire yelps a little. “Sorry,” Combeferre says, “I know it stings.”

 

Grantaire sucks in a deep breath as Combeferre dabs blood away from his split lip; they both know well enough by now that there’s nothing to do for it. There are some things, anyways, Grantaire thinks, that all the plastics and antiseptic in the world can’t fix.

 

He says, “you’re going to be a good doctor, you know that?”

 

“Don’t talk,” Combeferre says, and tilts Grantaire’s head to better clean the cut, but when he upends the antiseptic bottle over the paper towel Grantaire sees that he’s smiling.

 

__________

 

Grantaire spends the night there. He offers to sleep in the front room on the couch, in his clothes, but Combeferre’s mother gets home from work at seven and is horrified at that prospect. She cooks dinner and Grantaire and Combeferre help her, the three of them in the bright steam-filled kitchen with all the lights on, while Combeferre’s sisters lay out the table. That night Combeferre lends Grantaire a shirt and flannel pants and they share Combeferre’s bed. It’s far past the point of awkwardness.

 

In the middle of the night Grantaire wakes suddenly from a dream in which his father had chased him through the streets with a gun, threatening to shoot him dead. He’s lying on his side and Combeferre’s arms are around him from behind, Combeferre’s cheek pressed to the back of his neck.

 

He falls asleep again, wakes again in the predawn light. He borrows jeans and a jumper from Combeferre and they make toast in the kitchen and Combeferre’s little sisters come out in bright jackets with messy hair.

 

“Give me a plait, ‘Ferre,” Celeste says, and she stands on a wooden stool while Combeferre does the braid. He’s decent at doing the kind of hairstyles that little girls favor—plaits and elaborate pigtails that Grantaire can only marvel at.

 

On the trainride to school Grantaire begins to feel desperate and sick again.

 

“You okay?” Combeferre asks.

 

“No.” Grantaire drops his head, stares fixedly at the swaying floor under his trainers. “I don’t have my books with me, I didn’t do any homework this weekend. I’m fucked.”

 

“You’ll be fine,” Combeferre says, but Grantaire won’t be fine. He’ll get into trouble again, and get scolded in front of the class, probably chided (for the uptenth time) for being careless and lazy. The implication being that he’s stupid and a failure.

 

He wishes that he was riding the train in from a wealthy neighborhood, a notebook full of completed homework in his backpack. He wishes that his father wasn’t reeling drunk most evenings, wasn’t so liable to haul off and punch Grantaire, or slap him, or slap his mother. He wishes that he were bright, intelligent, motivated.

 

He wishes that he cared more.

 

______________

 

Grantaire isn’t sure what he’s hoping for during fourth period Political Science. For Enjolras to look his way and smile? Offer a concerned comment? Ask him to stay after class and inquire as to how he’d gotten on for the rest of the weekend?

 

But Enjolras looks his way only a few times, offering a cursory nod when Grantaire supplies an answer to a question (he’s incorrect, as always). When class is over Grantaire lingers, putting his notebook away slowly, but Enjolras is preoccupied with erasing the door and only nods when Grantaire says bye.

This trend continues well into October. Enjolras seems distant, as if his interest in Grantaire’s potential has dwindled. With good reason, probably, because Grantaire is barely scraping by with a passing grade. He fails every assessment, flunks oral exams spectacularly. By the middle of the month they’ve gone on to discussing contemporary French politics, and Grantaire can’t even answer questions aloud in class.

 

He bullshits where he can, covers ignorance with antagonization. It’s easier to hurl out a cynical comment about corruption in government than admit to not knowing how the president is elected. Éponine offers to tutor him for the final exam at the end of the semester, but Grantaire’s too proud to accept her help.

 

“I’ll fail on my own terms,” he informs her. They hurtle into November, and the weather turns cold and damp. Grantaire’s father comes home drunk every night. His mother stays out later and later. Sometimes she doesn’t come home at all. Grantaire spends a lot of time in his bedroom. Sometimes Éponine sneaks up the fire escape and they smoke joints together with the window open, rain lashing inside. It’s sad to be sitting close to someone and feel a million miles away from them.

 

He spends the weekends getting studiously and fantastically drunk.

 

_____________

 

“No one has a comment?” Enjolras twists a piece of chalk between his hands, staring at the class. It’s last period, and rainy, and the room is silent. “Don’t you think that this is a problem that affects your generation?”

 

They’re talking about corporations. It’s not really a subject that’s typically covered, but Enjolras has launched off on a tangent and is calling upon the class to speak. He likes this, likes to see them get fired up about things: abortion rights and voting rights and right of any kind, really.

 

“Corporations are good for infrastructure,” someone says softly.

 

“Okay.” Enjolras nods. “Sure. So they can be positive, a force of good in the economy. Can anyone provide a counterpoint?”

 

Silence.

 

“How about this: if corporations are so positive, why do workers feel the need to unionize?”

 

Silence.

 

Grantaire is struck suddenly and vividly by the urge to speak, and before he can stop himself—or, really, think about what he’s about to say—he’s blurting,

 

“I don’t believe in unions.”

 

“You don’t believe in unions.”

 

“No.” And Enjolras is looking at him, straight at him, eyes blue, knife-sharp, the drowning gaze, eyes like fucking oceans. Grantaire’s cheeks heat in a furious blush. “They’re more trouble than they’re worth. _À mon avis_.”

 

Something sparks behind Enjolras’ eyes. “Would you care to explain?”

 

There’s a tone in the back of his voice, in the intonation of it, that drives the words out of Grantaire’s mouth fast and true, and if he’s dropping slang he doesn’t care.

 

“Unions breed anger. People work for big corporations and they’re unhappy, they get pissed, they’re hanging around with the guys after work and say hey, let’s start a union, let’s not stand for this shit anymore, and so they try to start a union, and they get shit on by the corporation. But say they make it. Now they’re getting paid more but they’re still unhappy. They want higher wages, they want more. They’re still unsatisfied. They’re still angry.” He leans back, spreads his hands, palms up. “People always want more. That’s the bitter truth, amigo.”

 

Enjolras stares. Drowning eyes, gaze that eats Grantaire whole.

 

“Stay after class, Grantaire,” he says, and turns away. “Prouvaire, I believe that you raised your hand…”

 

____________

 

“So, what is it?” Grantaire slams his notebook closed and crams it into his backpack. “Are you going to lecture me about my apathy?”

 

Enjolras is, uncharacteristically, silent. Grantaire waits until the last students have filed out of the classroom before turning to stare Enjolras down. It doesn’t work, because he can’t hold a glare for prolonged periods of time, not when Enjolras is involved.

 

“I’m worried about you,” Enjolras says, leaning against his desk. “And about your behavior in this class.”

 

“I’m passing, aren’t I?”

 

“Barely.”

 

“Barely is still passing.” But Grantaire feels like he can’t breathe properly, like the room is suddenly too small and the air too thick.

 

“Barely isn’t going to cut it anymore.” Enjolras folds his arms. “Would you care to explain why you continue to act like this? Challenging me in front of the class, making inappropriate comments—that bit about unions being a prime example. Using bad language.”

 

Grantaire swallows. “I’m a fuck-up,” he says, slowly, and then, “ _sir_.”

 

“Don’t call yourself that.”

 

“I don’t have to.”

 

“I don’t believe that any of your teachers would…”

 

“Oh, you don’t have to say it,” Grantaire grits, and he balks at how bitter he sounds. “I can hear you thinking it. Every time I open my mouth.”

 

“That isn’t true,” Enjolras says; there’s a sort of low, desperate quality to his voice that sets Grantaire on edge. “Please don’t say that, it’s not true at all.”

 

“Sure it isn’t.” And Grantaire’s aware of stepping closer to Enjolras, and Enjolras steps towards him, and then they’re a foot apart, staring. Every breath is heavy. Grantaire’s heart hammers in his chest.

 

“The more you talk about yourself—”

 

They’re pulled towards each other, Grantaire can feel every heartbeat reverberating in his chest, the light filtering through the window is grey, damp, washed-out—

 

“—like that, the worse your—”

 

He’s tilting his head and Enjolras’ eyes are whirlpools they’re dragging him in and under they’re a fucking rip-current and he—

 

“—outlook is going to be—”

 

He doesn’t want to be saved.

 

Maybe it’s Grantaire who closes the distance between them. Maybe it’s Enjolras. All he knows, all he recognizes is the warm press of someone else’s lips against his, and then Enjolras’ mouth is working against Grantaire’s and Grantaire is leaning into Enjolras’ touch, his hands on Enjolras’ chest, fingers curling in the wool of Enjolras’ jumper and everything is hot and golden and Grantaire is untouchable, on fire.

 

“Grantaire—” Enjolras pulls away. He’s breathing hard, chest rising and falling quickly under Grantaire’s hands. He steps backwards, up against the desk. For the first time, Enjolras isn’t collected, assured. “That was—completely out of line—”

 

“Wait,” Grantaire says, numbly, but Enjolras is spinning on his heel, hurrying around the desk, like he’s trying to put as much space as possible between himself and Grantaire.

 

“Please, just—go. Please, Grantaire.”

 

Grantaire lifts his backpack, slings it over his shoulder. He feels numb, like he’s drifting.

 

“I won’t—tell anyone, if that’s what you…”

 

“Grantaire, please.” Enjolras won’t look at him.

  
Grantaire lets the door slam shut behind him. The bang echoes sharply, like the report of a fired gun, chasing him down an empty hallway.


	5. Chapter 5

“Something’s wrong,” Jehan says.

 

“Nothing’s wrong.” Grantaire accepts the joint, puts it to his lips. “Let’s just get high and forget about everything for a while.”

 

Jehan says “okay” but he won’t stop looking at Grantaire funnily, like he’s waiting for Grantaire to explain.

 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Grantaire says, a little louder. It’s a cloudy afternoon, Saturday, and they’re sitting on the roof of Jehan’s apartment complex. “Seriously.” He coughs, and smoke curls from between his lips.

 

“So, this doesn’t have anything to do with you ditching Political Science three days in a row?”

 

Fuck. Fucking fuck god dammit fuck.

 

Of course Jehan would know. Of course he’d piece it together, of course he’d find the link, bridge the gap that Grantaire had worked so hard to widen.

 

“Nope.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Jehan reaches out, snatching the joint from Grantaire and sliding it between his own lips. “So, nothing to do with Enjolras.”

 

“I told you—”

 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.” Jehan inhales deeply. “I understand.”

 

“I really don’t,” Grantaire mutters. “I’m sorry. It’s just. Clashing.”

 

“Clashing,” Jehan echoes. “That’s a nice word for it.”

 

Suddenly, Grantaire feels like sobbing. Jehan passes him the joint and he sucks it hard, filling his mouth and throat with thick, hazy smoke. Lets it roll up and out of his mouth, tilts his head back so Jehan won’t see that his eyes have filled, inexplicably, with tears.

 

“It’s okay to be sad.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“It’s okay to be sad,” Jehan repeats, quietly, and he puts a hand on Grantaire’s.

 

“I’m not sad.”

 

Jehan looks sideways at Grantaire. His eyes are lidded with the high, and his lips curl into a gentle smile. “Okay,” he says. “It’s okay to not be sad, too.”

 

“I know.” Grantaire thinks about Enjolras, about the way their lips had felt pressed together, about the weight of his hands against Enjolras’ chest.

 

It was the last time he’d felt grounded.

 

______________

 

He avoids Enjolras for two more days, ditching school to hang around the neighborhood. He takes the train into the middle of the city, where he won’t see anyone he knows, and buys lots of packs of cigarettes. On Friday he buys vodka at the liquor store run by an old Polish guy who won’t ask for an ID and probably doesn’t care, gets beautifully drunk. He gets on a train going south and rides until he doesn’t know where he is.

 

All he can think about is Enjolras, and the class that he’s missing right now, and how Enjolras might look at his empty chair and feel badly. This makes Grantaire feel worse. He collapses on an iron bench on the pavement and stares at his feet for a long time.

 

“Hey, man.” There’s a young guy—early twenties, thin and scraggly—sitting at the other end of the bench, balanced, almost. He has dark hair and the jumpiness of a junkie riding the last wave of a good high. “Hey, you want some…?”

 

“No,” Grantaire says. “I’m clean.”

 

“Drunk, though.”

 

“Yeah, drunk.” He looks over, like, what of it, you fucking dick, and the guy is about bouncing in his seat.

 

“Good stuff, though. I got a clean kit, clean gear, if you need.”

 

“I don’t—” the thought of injecting himself with any kind of drug is actually a little sickening. Grantaire’s always had a (probably irrational) fear of needles. “I don’t do that.”

 

“Sure?”

 

“Fuck off,” he says, and then, “please.”

 

“Okay,” the guy says, “okay, fine, yeah, fine, sure, you fucker, you cock-sucker.”

 

Grantaire watches him leave and then looks at the ground for a few minutes. The gum-sticky pavement is swimming under his feet. He feels sick.

 

He doesn’t want to but he takes the train home, because it’s late afternoon and getting rainy. A heavy mist is falling as he ascends the station steps, and maybe it’s the shock of cold but Grantaire’s stomach suddenly turns and his throat tightens, and before he can stop himself he’s bent over the gutter, puking and shaking.

 

“Holy god, R, are you okay?”

 

Grantaire looks up, eyes glassy with sickness. “‘Ferre?”

 

“Yeah, it’s me.” There are hands on his back. “Shit, are you alright?”

 

“Fine,” Grantaire says. “Fine.”

 

But he’s not fine, his knees go weak and he bends over to vomit again and his vision is going kind of weird and blurry.

 

“I think I’m sick,” he manages through lips that feel numb.

 

“Grantaire,” Combeferre says softly, “you’re not even in your neighborhood. What are you doing?”

 

“I don’t know.” Grantaire says. He’s shaking hard. Without meaning to, he begins to cry. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

 

“How much did you have to drink, R?”

 

“I don’t know.” There are tears on his cheeks and Grantaire lets himself cry. He’s dimly aware of someone—Combeferre, it must be, there’s no one else—easing him up the street, and clinging to Combeferre’s jacket and there are stairs and he pukes twice in a hallway and then a door and Combeferre’s sisters faces. He’s sweating and freezing, teeth chattering, and all he can say is I think I’m sick, ‘Ferre.

 

Grantaire feels like he’s dreaming—he knows he isn’t, because in dreams you can’t really feel pain, and at the moment he’s certain he’s about an inch from fucking death—because Combeferre’s flat is spinning around him.

 

“Fuck,” he says, and the voice that comes out of his mouth sounds dry and ragged, not like his own at all. Combeferre’s sisters’ pale faces whirl before his own. They huddle around the bathroom door and Grantaire vomits again and tries not to cry but everything hurts, and Combeferre disappears and returns with flannel pants and a shirt.

 

“Put these on,” he says, and Grantaire obliges, dizzy. After that he goes into Combeferre’s room and Combeferre says “lie down on my bed” and Grantaire protests weakly but he falls down on the blankets and Combeferre sits with him while he shivers, curled into himself, and Combeferre pets his head and Grantaire buries his face in Combeferre’s pillow and cries silently.

 

____________

 

He wakes up in the very early morning, feeling empty. It’s the kind of waking-up you do after a long and disoriented sleep, and for a moment Grantaire isn’t entirely sure where he is. Then he sees Combeferre asleep, sitting cross-legged on his bed with his back against the wall.

 

Fuck. Grantaire is sweating and he still feels weak and shivery. He falls asleep again, wakes up to a cloudy morning and Combeferre trying to climb over him without waking him up.

 

“Shit, sorry,” Combeferre says when Grantaire stirs. “I was trying to let you sleep.”

 

“What time is it?”

 

“About nine.” Combeferre pulls his shirt over his head. “You should sleep. You were pretty sick last night.”

 

“I…” Grantaire thinks for a moment and swallows. His mouth tastes bitter and horrible. His head is pounding. “Shit, man, I’m so sorry, ‘Ferre—”

 

“Hey,” Combeferre says, unbuckling his belt and stepping out of his jeans. “Don’t apologize. Just go back to sleep.”

 

Grantaire almost cries again, because it’s cloudy outside and raining a little and Combeferre is standing there shirtless in his underwear and he gives Grantaire the fucking kindest smile, how can he be so kind to a fucker who puked all over him last night but then Combeferre vanishes to go take a shower and Grantaire falls back asleep.

 

He wakes up at noon. Combeferre is gone, and Grantaire thinks that the flat is empty and starts to panic until Celeste appears in the doorway.

 

“Hey.” He sits up, rubs at his face. “Hey, do you know where Combeferre is?”

 

“‘Ferre’s at the hospital,” she says. She’s wearing socks and a little dress and stares at him like he’s a lost puppy. “He said to tell you to feel better and if you’re going to wear those home to please bring them back.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“He said without paint on them.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Okay.” She lingers for a while, watching him, and then turns and disappears. Grantaire brushes his teeth and washes his face, and then puts on a sweatshirt and his shoes and says goodbye to Celeste and Marie and leaves.

 

______________

 

He goes home and takes a shower and then shuts himself in his bedroom. At ten o’clock he falls into a hazy sleep, wakes up at six-thirty in the morning with grey light coming through the windows.

 

It’s a cold walk to the train station, and Éponine doesn’t show up until the train’s already pulled up to the platform; she scrambles through the doors, colliding roughly with a suit-and-tie-clad businessman and a youth in a tracksuit.

 

“Watch out, huh?” the youth mutters. Éponine glares at him, dropping onto the bench-seat beside Grantaire.

 

She looks exhausted and wan, her face washed-out, dark circles rimming her eyes, hair drawn up into a tangled bun.

 

Grantaire opens his mouth to speak, but she beats him to it.

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Éponine says tersely, fishing a stick of gum from her pocket and folding it into her mouth. She chews frantically. She smells like cigarettes and weed. “I got a text from ‘Ferre yesterday, I know what happened and you’ve got no right to—”

 

“I wasn’t,’ Grantaire says shortly, “going to say anything.”

 

Éponine is deign to respond to that. She chews her gum in stoney silence for the duration of the train ride, and when they pull into the station she shoots out of her seat, sidestepping a hoard of their classmates and making for the school gates at a brisk and—or so Grantaire deduces—infuriated walk.

 

He ditches maths—can’t bring himself to go, and he’s failing anyways so figures it doesn’t matter. He locks himself in the boy’s toilets and falls asleep for an hour, waking up to a text from Jehan: é said you were at school today, where are you?

 

Fuck. He slams his way out of the stall, shoving past a group of younger boys who are lighting up cigarettes. The halls are emptying quickly as classes begin, and Grantaire skids into Political Science just as Enjolras is finishing roll-call.

 

“Grantaire,” he says lightly, pencil descending on the roster. His eyes flick across Grantaire’s face, then away. Grantaire’s heart clenches up.

 

The morning’s lecture is about voting rights, but Grantaire isn’t paying attention. Who would bother with amendments and the voting systems of other countries (is he ever going to go to the United States, or Denmark, or Belgium or Germany? Probably not) when Enjolras is pacing at the front of the room, gesturing broadly, writing on the board, his eyes so sharp and bright you could cut yourself on them, the muscles of his back and forearms shifting as he writes and gesticulates.

 

Grantaire’s mind flashes suddenly and violently to what Enjolras would look like fucking Grantaire; how Enjolras’ neck would taste if Grantaire bit down on it, hard. The thought drives his legs together, his heart beating loudly in his ears. He refuses to let himself get a hard-on, not in class, not anyplace besides his own bedroom, where he can jerk himself off to shameful and heated fantasies.

 

When the bell rings a shuffling clatter rises as students shove back their chairs and shove notebooks into their backpacks, heading for the door. Grantaire lingers purposefully, taking more time than strictly necessary to close his notebook and cap his pen.

 

“Is everything okay with ‘Ponine?” Jehan asks, standing beside Grantaire’s desk.

 

“I don’t know. Something happened this week, I guess.” He slides his notebook into his backpack. “I have to ask Enjolras something. Missing all that school, and—I’ll catch up with you.”

 

It’s a flimsy lie, but apparently believable enough, because Jehan nods and joins the throng headed for the door. Brujon is the last one out, leaving Grantaire and Enjolras alone in the classroom. The space suddenly feels too big.

 

“Grantaire.” Enjolras clears his throat softly. Grantaire’s heartbeat quickens.

 

“What?”

 

“You can’t be in here.”

 

“Aren’t I a student?”

 

“That’s not what I—” Enjolras rakes his hands through his hair; there’s a sharp edge of desperation in his voice. “You can’t be alone in here with me. Not after what happened.”

 

Grantaire shoulders his backpack. There’s a voice in his head spurring him on. He approaches Enjolras’ desk, considering that this might be a bad idea and that he might end up sad and humiliated but he doesn’t care, can’t care because Enjolras is radiant and it’s shit weather outside but in here everything is golden.

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“I don’t have to explain that what happened was illegal, Grantaire.”

 

“It isn’t.” Why is he breathing so quickly? “The age of consent is—”

 

“This isn’t about consent.” Enjolras looks briefly panicked. “This is about me being your instructor, being in a position of authority and abusing that authority.”

 

“I’m seventeen. How old are you?” Grantaire doesn’t mean for his voice to bite but it does, short and sharp.

 

“That’s irrelevant.”

 

“It isn’t.” Grantaire steps closer. Enjolras turns away hurriedly and begins erasing the chalkboard with violent motions. “Twenty-three, twenty-two?”

 

“Yes, I’m twenty-two.” Enjolras drops the eraser. “I’m twenty-two years old, and you’re seventeen, and that’s a five-year difference that overshadows completely whatever feelings I may—”

 

Then he freezes, grits his teeth; Grantaire’s chest constricts in a sudden and all-consuming euphoria.

 

“Feelings?”

 

“Grantaire.”

 

“Please.” He’s breathless and his heart is beating so goddamn fast and he’s trying to speak slowly but the words come spilling out, quicksilver and sharp with hope. “I know you think it’s wrong but haven’t you seen the way I look at you please I just want—everything, I don’t care if we have to hide it we can make it work please I know that you want it to I can see the look in your eyes right now I’m not stupid I know I’m pretty stupid, actually, but please Enjolras we can—”

 

He breaks off because Enjolras has leaned across the desk and kissed him, swiftly and fully.

 

Grantaire’s world goes white with the mad, mad joy of it all.

 

____________

  
  


They have to hide it. Enjolras establishes that at once. He doesn’t so much say it as think it, think it so intensely that Grantaire can read his eyes like a book.

 

It’s only one kiss, but it’s a long kiss, and Grantaire’s hands work under Enjolras’ shirt while Enjolras’ tangle in Grantaire’s hair, and by the time they break away they’re both breathless and warm-faced. Grantaire backs away slowly, blushing furiously, and Enjolras looks down at his desk.

 

“This can’t be a—”

 

“I understand,” Grantaire says, but his heart is buoyant with something he recognizes as hope. He knows—not hopes or predicts but knows—that this will happen again, that more will happen. Enjolras kissed him first, he kissed him first, he fucking kissed him first oh god that means something, right?

 

“See you around,” Grantaire says, leaving before his smile gets too wide. He goes out into the empty, silent hallway (he’s already ten minutes late to art, might as well ditch altogether) grinning like a fool—but the happiest fool in the world. He realizes that his hands are shaking; his whole body feels light and jittery.

 

He chews his lower lip numb trying to hide his smile.

 

______________

 

Days spiral into a week, and then two weeks. Grantaire lingers after every Political Science class, under the pretense of ‘asking Enjolras about the homework’ or ‘avoiding going to art class’. He wants nothing more than to lean across the desk and kiss Enjolras (or shove him up against the wall and thrust a hand down his pants) but Enjolras seems jumpy and nervous and vague, and Grantaire leaves mildly unhopeful about everything.

 

One Saturday night in late-November he trudges twenty blocks in the snow with Éponine, too broke to afford a taxi, to a house party some guy is having. The second they’re through the door, Grantaire realizes that ‘some guy’ is one of Montparnasse’s cronies, and the flat is full of drunk sleazy-looking guys and sleek girls in short dresses and dangerous heels.

 

Grantaire bums around for a while, drinking vodka and fruity liquor from a plastic cup. A few girls try to pull him onto a makeshift dance floor, but he declines, and a guy with buzzed hair offers him pills for an exorbitant amount of money, which he also declines. It’s only about ten o’clock, but Grantaire’s had more than enough. He searches out Éponine, but asking around for a dark-haired girl in heels and a black dress proves more difficult than he’d imagined.

 

“She’s about this tall.” He gestures to about eye-level. A girl with half her head shaved downs two pills, takes a swig of beer, and says,

 

“Yeah, I know who you’re talking about. She’s in one of the bedrooms.”

 

Shit.

 

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, and pushes his way towards the bedrooms (bedroom? Multiple bedrooms? The flat isn’t big by any means, this shouldn’t be difficult). The first door isn’t locked, but reveals a bathroom in which a guy is receiving a blowjob from a half-nude girl. Grantaire apologizes and tries the next door—a closet where a group of partiers are snorting coke—and then the last door on the right.

 

He shoulders open the door, freezes. Éponine’s sprawled on her back, her dress pulled up around her waist, Montparnasse on top of her. His pants are down around his knees.

 

“Fuck!” Grantaire cries, the word flying from his mouth automatically. He slams the door, breathing hard. He’s not even sure if they’d seen him. He feels sick.

 

It’s snowing a little, but Grantaire doesn’t feel the cold. Tugging his jacket over his shoulders, he starts walking; he’s not even sure where he’s going, but ends up walking for a long, long time, until he’s reached the river. In the darkness the Seine is a beast: slow and terrible and cold. Grantaire makes for a sidewalk café where the lights are on, hoping at least for some cheap coffee and a little warmth.

 

He’s handing over some change for the coffee when a figure approaches, hunched against the wind, golden curly hair and high cheekbones and a black coat and Grantaire’s world goes hazy for a moment.

 

He says, “why am I always buying coffee when we see each other?”.

 

He means “why do my knees always go weak when I see you?”.

 

“Grantaire.” Enjolras has got his hands deep in his pockets, hood pulled up. “This is a. A surprise. To say the least.”

 

“No joking.” Grantaire takes his coffee. “You want some?”

 

“No, thank you.”

 

“Okay.” They stand in awkward silence for a moment. Then Enjolras jerks his chin towards the river and says,

 

“Want to walk?”

 

“Sure.” Grantaire falls into step beside Enjolras, aware that his heart is beating really, really fast and he feels a little shaky.

 

“What are you doing out alone?”

 

“Minding my own, Maman,” Grantaire coughs out a half-laugh. Then he says, “I was at a party with a friend. She. Became otherwise occupied.”

 

Enjolras makes a faint sound of dissent, like he can’t imagine people Grantaire’s age partying or getting up to no good. Then Grantaire realizes that it’s something more akin to disapproval.

 

“We do hook up with people, drink. People my age.”

 

“I know. I’m not some fogey.”

 

“Fogey,” Grantaire echoes, and laughs for real, because he can’t imagine anyone other than Enjolras using that word. Fogey.

 

“It’s worrying to me,” Enjolras says, raising his voice above the wind. “I see young people out on the street, drunk off their asses…”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I think, fuck, all the time they’re wasting…”

 

“Yeah.” Grantaire is not about to admit that hearing Enjolras say fuck makes him half-hard. “Well.”

 

They continue in silence. The image of Éponine and Montparnasse together is gnawing at Grantaire, chasing him, won’t leave him be.

 

“She was fucking a guy,” he blurts, voice too loud and sudden even in the light, flurrying snow. Enjolras turns, eyebrows quirked.

 

“Who?”

 

“My friend. I walked in on them. Sorry,” he adds, blushing only a little. “Sorry, that was. I don’t know. I just. We’ve known each other a long time, she’s like a sister to me.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras says.

 

Grantaire almost laughs; sees Éponine with her dress up around her waist, sees Montparnasse’s hands on her body, sees them fucking. Brutal, no loving softness. He shakes his head.

 

“It’s alright.”

 

They pass under cones of light from the streetlamps. Enjolras removes his hands from his pockets, cups them around his mouth and blows, rubs them together. His knuckles are red. Grantaire reaches out and takes Enjolras’ hand; quick, flighty, an impulse.

 

“What are you doing?” Enjolras says, but it’s hardly a question.

 

“Nothing,” Grantaire says, thinking, everything. Thinking, I just want to touch you, why won’t you let me touch you?.

 

“Your hand is warm,” Enjolras says.

 

“So’s yours.”

 

They stop; slowly, the snow falling in silent drifts around them. Grantaire leans forward, aware that Enjolras is doing the same and their lips are going to touch, and they do, and kissing Enjolras is like seeing sunlight after being locked in a dark room for a decade, for a century…

 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says, pulling away infinitesimally, their foreheads pressed together, “I can’t stop doing this.”

 

Grantaire exhales a desperate, happy laugh. “You don’t have to.”

 

“God,” Enjolras whispers, warm against Grantaire’s lips. “I hope not, I hope not.”

  
Then they break apart, and let their hands tangle again, and they walk together into the almost-midnight darkness, neither feeling the cold.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little ~smutty~, which i figure a lot of people will enjoy! i'll try to get another chapter out before next week but in all honesty it might not happen, because i'm going into tech week for a play, which is taking up a LOT of time (i love love love it, don't get me wrong, but it's a lot of time just kind of hanging around in a theatre)! but expect more soon! (or soon-ish. hopefully!)

“Fuck me,” Jehan says.

 

“What’s up?” Combeferre shoves his hands into his pockets, voice muffled behind a woolen scarf.

 

“Grades come out today.” Jehan pulls a face; something between a pout and a grimace. “I think I’m failing everything.”

 

He isn’t, of course. He’s probably pulling excellent grades, and this bothers Grantaire. Of course he’s happy for his friends—more than happy, he’s proud of them. But, unlike Jehan, Grantaire actually is failing. He’s barely scraping by in Art History and Political Science, failing English and Maths, and Literature is a joke—he hasn’t handed in a single paper or assignment all semester. Art is decent, but it’s not a class that anyone takes seriously.

 

“I’m sure that we’ll all be fine,” Combeferre says, like he can guess what Grantaire is thinking. They climb the snowy slope of the street that leads up to the school gates. Grantaire tries to ignore the clenching in his chest, the feeling that heralds impending failure.

 

 _We won’t be fine, actually,_ he thinks.

 

He says nothing.

  
  


________________

 

As predicted, Grantaire receives failing marks in Maths, English and Literature. Political Science is a close call. Art History and Art are fairly decent; acceptable, which is surprising. While his friends peer and their grades and speculate how poorly they can perform on their finals and pass the semester, Grantaire folds his report up and crams it into his backpack.

 

“I have to go,” he says, already feeling hollow.

 

“Where? You okay?” Combeferre asks.

 

“Infirmary. I’ve got this fucking horrible headache…”

 

He’s halfway down the hall before Combeferre can respond.

 

______________

 

Enjolras is grading papers when Grantaire comes in.

 

“You might knock,” he says, marking up someone’s essay.

 

“I passed your class.”

 

“You are passing. As of right now. Unless you fail the final.”

 

“Which I won’t. But thank you, for having such faith in me.” Grantaire crosses the room in easy strides.

 

“Don’t accuse me of being faithless.” Enjolras doesn’t look up, but he scoffs a little. Grantaire leans against the desk, pushing down hard on the green metal with the heels of his palms. “Anything but faithless.”

 

“How about distant?”

 

“Grantaire, please.”

 

“I won’t apologize.” Grantaire is bold with want. His chest has felt tight all day; he needs release in every sense of the word, even if it only means a shameful kiss before Enjolras’ next class starts.

 

“And you shouldn’t. I’m not asking you to. But this...thing, whatever’s...going on here, it’s something that we need to separate from school. Do you understand why?”

 

“I’m not an idiot,” Grantaire sulks. He detests beyond articulation people treating him like a child; it seems that they view him as either a helpless kid or a hapless adult. He’s not sure which is better.

 

“I don’t believe that I insinuated that you are.” Enjolras looks up, his mouth twitching into a smile. He makes a final mark on the essay and slips it into a stack of graded papers. “Grantaire,” he says, and his voice is almost wistful. “Grantaire, Grantaire.”

 

“Yes,” Grantaire says, almost without meaning to. He wants nothing more than to hear his name on Enjolras’ lips, whispered against his own skin…

 

“I have a faculty meeting next period, I’m afraid.” Enjolras stands. Grantaire is definitely not tracking Enjolras’ smooth, easy motions with his eyes, following the curve of Enjolras’ back and shoulders. Enjolras pulls his jacket on and in doing so his shirt rides up in the front, and Grantaire’s knees weaken a little as he sees Enjolras’ stomach, hipbones, a line of light hair disappearing into the waistband of his jeans…

 

“Right.” Grantaire’s lips barely move. He hot-foots it out of the classroom, spends the next period (Maths) in a blur of a daydream.

 

As soon as the bell rings Grantaire is out of his seat, throwing his papers into his backpack and sprinting down the hall in the direction of Enjolras’ classroom. His chest already feels full and tight. When he sees Enjolras through the classroom door’s rectangular plexiglass window his stomach flutters; he comes in without knocking.

 

“Hello,” Enjolras says. He’s packing up a satchel at his desk. “You seem breathless.”

 

Grantaire huffs out an awkward laugh. “Yeah.”

 

He puts his hands in his jeans pockets, because he’s not sure what else to do with them, and he’s afraid of touching Enjolras at school, and if his hands aren’t in his pockets they’re going to end up wandering and _oh god I just want to touch him_.

 

“I’m assuming that you’ve dropped by on school business?” Enjolras lifts the satchel and slings it over his shoulder, holds the door open for Grantaire and locks it behind them.

 

“Yeah.” Grantaire wracks his mind for something—anything—remotely related to Political Science. “I actually had a question about your homework assignment. Honestly, I think it’s pretty unfair of you to ask us for…”

 

The conversation (if it can be called a conversation, which is generous because it’s really Grantaire clinging desperately to the quickly-overworked subject of Enjolras’ latest assignment) carries them all the way to the school gates and onto the street beyond. There are few people about, and the day is cloudy and cold. Grantaire turns his face into the wind and squints.

 

“Can I walk with you?” He blurts when they reach the corner.

 

Enjolras looks at him sharply. “Where?”

 

Home, Grantaire thinks. “Anywhere.”

 

“I’m headed home, Grantaire, and frankly I don’t think it’s appropriate…”

 

“Don’t think what’s appropriate?” Grantaire shivers, feeling the bite of cold for the first time. He wants to snap _that you’re fucking around with a student?_ , but refrains because it would be completely cruel and he and Enjolras haven’t technically done anything yet.

 

“You’re right.” Enjolras laughs softly. “You’re right, I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s alright.” Grantaire feels dazed. In the afternoon half-light Enjolras’ smile is radiant. They walk for several blocks in companionable silence. Grantaire can feel Enjolras’ quiet, steady worry—the paranoia that someone will see them together—but Enjolras’ presence is enough to make everything feel okay, everything feel steady.

 

The eastern sky is steely, and as they cross the bridge over the river the weather darkens and it begins to snow. It occurs to Grantaire for the first time that they’re actually walking towards Enjolras’ apartment, and the implied intimacy of that is both electrifying and terrifying.

 

When they get stuck on a corner waiting for a traffic light to change Grantaire stands on his toes and pulls Enjolras in for a kiss by the lapels of his jacket. Enjolras is warmth and reassurance, and Grantaire leans into the kiss, the hot press of his mouth, and the light still hasn’t changed and the front of Grantaire’s jeans feel too tight.

 

He whines softly against Enjolras’ lips.

 

“What are…” Enjolras tilts his head, pulls back, looks around as if by reflex. “Grantaire, I…”

 

“Please,” Grantaire says. His lips feel heavy, numb. He’s hot with want—with need, dammit, fuck, he’s already so hard and Enjolras’ tongue running across his lower lip makes him want to do something absolutely _illegal_ in public.

 

Then they’re going into the back restroom of a noisy café, a place with grimy white tiles and muddy snow tracked all over the floor, and this isn’t where it’s supposed to happen but Grantaire doesn’t care, all he can think about is the way that Enjolras feels pressed up against him.

 

Enjolras locks the door, a nervous fumbling motion, and then they’re up against each other, and Grantaire’s aware of gasping because there’s a hand at his waistband, and then—

 

“Fuck,” he says weakly, as Enjolras slides a hand into the front of Grantaire’s pants. He feels like he’s on fire. “Yes, fuck.”

 

Enjolras kisses Grantaire again, slowly, and starts to jerk him off with quick, heavy movements. Grantaire thrusts up into Enjolras’ curled fingers, trembling, lacing his fingers behind Enjolras’ neck. Most of him can’t believe that this is actually happening. The part of him that does is shocked; shocked like he’s stuck his finger in a socket.

 

“Don’t,” he pants, “stop, please. Don’t, oh, god, don’t, don’t stop please oh god Enjolras oh god—”

 

Then he’s coming (too quickly? Was it too quickly?) into Enjolras’ hand, moaning against Enjolras’ mouth, his knees nearly buckling.

 

“God,” Enjolras says, very softly. Grantaire looks up; their snag, hold. Something passes between them, a silent acknowledgement that there’s no turning back now. Enjolras’ eyes are hazy.

 

“Fuck.” Grantaire zips his jeans up, then leans against Enjolras. He puts his head on Enjolras’ shoulder, closes his eyes. Inhales, exhales. When he opens his eyes, Enjolras is looking down at him.

 

“Oh, Grantaire.” His hand tangles in Grantaire’s hair, strokes it gently. They stay like that for a long time, listening to the clamor of the café outside, just holding each other.

 

___________

  
  


On Wednesday morning, Grantaire fails his Political Science test.

 

He just doesn’t understand, completely and resoundingly. It’s no use bullshitting answers and scribbling down unelegant essays about French government and how proud he is to be young in France (the insinuation, of course, being that because he is young and excited about politics he should be able to change something about French government, but Grantaire is most definitely not excited in any way about French politics, whatsoever).

 

“ _Putain exam_ ,” he mutters as he leaves, too ashamed to look at Enjolras.

 

“That was utter shit,” Jehan mumbles. “I think I failed.”

 

He probably hasn’t—which should irk Grantaire, but doesn’t. Éponine jogs up beside them, pulling on her jacket.

 

“How did your test go?” Jehan asks. She scoffs in response, shaking her head. It’s a quick, violent motion.

 

“I have other shit to worry about.”

 

Grantaire watches her hurry across the yard, looking over her shoulder in what he determines to be either a nervous tic or bad habit bred from living in a rough neighborhood.

 

“What’s bugging her?” Jehan sweeps a lock of hair behind his ear, tilting his head to track Éponine’s path.

 

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering the same.”

 

“She isn’t herself. Or hasn’t been, lately.”

 

“Yeah.” His backpack feels like a dead weight on his shoulders. Grantaire is beyond grateful that it’s last period.

 

“I hope that everything’s okay,” Jehan adds, and that jolts Grantaire back to the present, because in all honesty he’s never considered that things might not be okay with Éponine, and he realizes that she’s been more than distant lately, that she’s silent on their morning train rides and she hasn’t climbed up his fire escape for nearly a week now (though he’s chalked that up to the snow and bad weather).

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’m sure that everything’s fine.”

  
  


___________

 

Everything is definitely not fine.

 

On Friday afternoon, Grantaire hurries after Éponine, tailing her through the school gates and onto the street.

 

“Hey!” He slows beside her, tries to pretend that he’s not breathless from chasing her down. “You going out tonight?”

 

She makes a noncommittal sound.

 

“This guy I know is having a party near Antonio’s place. We could go together, if you want.” Then, when Éponine still looks disinterested and distracted, he adds, “he’s got some great stuff. Anything you want, this guy’s got.”

 

“I can’t.” She waves to someone on the street; Grantaire follows her line of vision and his heart sinks. Montparnasse has pulled up on a motorbike, helmetless, wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses despite the overcast day. “I’m going out with some of Montparnasse’s friends.”

 

“Oh.” Grantaire forces a semblance of a smile. “Okay.”

 

He watches Éponine jog across the street, lean over the kiss Montparnasse on the mouth. Hard and swift, and then she straddles the bike behind him. They skidd away, spraying snow.

 

 _So that’s how it is_. Grantaire feels oddly empty. He might have known that they’d get together eventually—Montparnasse is suave and attractive and always has copious amounts of money and nice clothes, however suspiciously acquired. More importantly, though, Montparnasse has wanted Éponine for a long time, and if there’s one thing that Grantaire has learned it’s that Montparnasse always gets what he wants.

 

Grantaire considers returning to the school building, seeing if Enjolras is around; but they’ve seen little of each other since the public-bathroom thing, and Grantaire doesn’t really feel like initiating a conversation about it now. He walks to the train station feeling weird and detached. He hates—hates—the thought of Éponine being pulled around by Montparnasse. When he’d walked in on them he’d assumed that it was a one-time thing, a cheap hookup fueled by alcohol and weed and loud music, not built to last. Not intended to. Monogamy isn’t Éponine’s strong suit, nor Montparnasse’s.

 

 _Whatever_ , he thinks. _Whatever, it doesn’t matter_.

 

But it does matter. Grantaire isn’t sure why—Éponine’s seventeen, she’s mature, she can handle herself just fine—but the situation irks him in a way that he doesn’t know how to articulate. He falls asleep on the train ride home, and nearly misses his stop.

 

____________

 

“You want to go to a party?” Grantaire asks.

 

“You’re joking, right?”

 

“Shut up.” Grantaire swipes at Combeferre with a dishtowel. They’re standing side by side at the kitchen sink, drying dishes and listening to tinny rap music on the radio. “You might like it, you know.”

 

“I’m sure I would.” Combeferre says, straight-faced. They stare dead-pan at each other for a moment, then bust out laughing.

 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, although he doesn’t really know why he’s apologizing.

 

“Look—” Combeferre says, and Grantaire thinks that he’s going to say something else, but he falls silent. Dries a few more dishes in silence. Grantaire can hear the television playing in the front room; a noisy kid’s cartoon about a mouse with a horrifically high-pitched voice. He aches for someone to put his arms around, or to put their arms around him.

 

“It’s getting late,” Grantaire says, a shoddy excuse.

 

“I understand.”

 

“Thank you.” He hugs Combeferre tightly, closes his eyes. He knows the smell of Combeferre’s soap, the feel of Combeferre’s hands, and there’s no way to pretend that it’s someone else embracing him. They kiss each other’s cheeks and then Grantaire takes his jacket and leaves.

 

Combeferre’s sisters wave to him on his way out the door. He pauses and looks back at the warm dim flat, the sound of water running as Combeferre finishes doing the dishes, at the girls’ jackets hung on the inside of the door, at boots on the ground and the television flashing lights out across the window.

 

He goes down the stairs smiling to himself; a sad, narrow smile.

 

______________

 

The party is fucking _crazy_.

 

Grantaire goes in with a specific mindset (he’s not going to go insane tonight, he’s going to drink a little and see if he runs into some friends and he’s going to have a good time and forget about everything for a couple of hours) and within ten minutes someone’s pressed shots into his hand and he’s downed them and there’s a guy with weed and a guy with smack and he’s shaking his head and saying _no, man_ but the music is _so fucking loud_.

 

There’s also vodka and fruity liquor that tastes like the underside of, like, a carpet in a strip joint, and Grantaire finds himself up on the rooftop of an unfamiliar building with Bahorel and some guy from Amsterdam who has, apparently, some really good drugs. This isn’t so much said as heavily implied, but turns out to be true.

 

“You want some?” The guy has hair that’s buzzed on one side, and he’s pounded these pills up into a powder and is snorting that powder, quickly and rhythmically.

 

Grantaire is about to say no, but something spurs him to say yes, and he accepts the pills and snorts them through a rolled-up tube of what he thinks might be a bill. Shakes his head like a dog. His nose burns like hell.

 

The kick is immediate and effective.

 

Grantaire dances like mad, kisses Bahorel on the cheeks and forehead and lips, kisses the guy from Amsterdam, kisses a girl with curly red hair, kisses a strange guy with a lot of tattoos. He’s sweating. He drinks more and feels dizzy. Everything is moving very quickly, the sound throbbing in and out and in and out, everything a haze, everything bright and close and loud, so loud, yeah, he’s in the very middle of everything, he is the center. He feels wild and on the absolute edge of everything he’s okay with.

 

He ends up sleeping on the floor in someone’s apartment, wakes up in the morning to find Bahorel shirtless on the couch with an unfamiliar girl. Feeling weak and dizzy, Grantaire gets his jacket (he’d used it as a blanket in the night) and tiptoes over a wreckage of sleeping people and empty bottles and abandoned coats and shoes.

 

It takes him a moment to get his bearings but Grantaire determines that he’s actually only a couple of streets from his apartment. He walks home, shivering because it’s about negative twenty degrees (it’s probably about thirty, but windy and fucking cold). His mother is home. She’s sewing up his father’s denim jacket in the front room.

 

“Where’ve you been?”

 

“Combeferre’s,” Grantaire says automatically. His parents don’t know Combeferre well, only as a hazy and mostly-anonymous friend who studies a lot and is generally smart and motivated. “Where’s Papa?”

 

His mother’s face tightens. She holds the denim jacket up to the light. It’s been torn down the sleeve. “Asleep.”

 

The smell of alcohol lingers in the hallway outside his parent’s bedroom. Grantaire locks himself in the bathroom and runs the shower, water so hot it burns. He stands under the stream for a long time, skin burning but he doesn’t care; he feels empty. He wonders when his father will sleep it off, will wake up and want to pick a fight with Grantaire, because there’s always a fight to pick with Grantaire.

 

He puts his head in his hands and almost cries.

 

______________

  
  


“Hi, stranger,” Grantaire says Monday afternoon, when Éponine slides onto the bench beside him. The train lurches forward, swaying; they’re nearly alone in the carriage, a rarity and a blessing. “Didn’t see you all weekend.”

 

“Yeah.” Her face is tight and unreadable.

 

“Is everything…?”

 

“No.”

 

“Is this about Montparnasse?” Grantaire is aware that his fists have clenched in his lap. He thinks, because I’ll kill him if it is.

 

Éponine lets out a half-laugh, half-sob. She looks up, the way that people do when they’re about to cry, when they’re trying hard not to.

 

“Is it?” His fingers curl around her arm; it’s meant to reassure, but Éponine flinches away. Grantaire’s stomach drops. “Éponine,” he says, and yeah, his voice drops a few octaves and suddenly nothing’s funny anymore. “What’s wrong, ‘Ponine? What happened?”

 

“Nothing.” She’s trembling. Shakes her head. “Nothing, it’s nothing.”

 

“Because if this is Montparnasse, if this is that _bastard_ screwing around with—”

  
“Shit, Grantaire,” she says, and her eyes are bright and dark with tears. “I’m pregnant.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello everyone,
> 
> i'm not a huge fan of this chapter, but i wanted to quickly pound something out before the week's through. i'm trying to juggle play tech week (it's going well, and endless thanks to those who wished me luck!) as well as finishing a research project for a national science challenge (and science is really hardly my strongest area) as well as other homework and tests, etc., so i'm really short on writing time at the moment!
> 
> as a warning: this chapter contains a TRIGGER WARNING for an unsafe/dubious consent bdsm-type sexual scenario. i wanted to just throw that out there in case anyone is triggered as i would hate to cause anyone duress.

 

“It’s Éponine,” Grantaire says when Combeferre opens the door. He’s shaky, his heartbeat high in his chest. It’s a reaction that feels a little bit like panic. “It’s Éponine, she’s—”

 

“I know.” Combeferre’s expression is unreadable only because Grantaire doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking for.

 

“You know?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They stand, facing each other, caught on the precipice of a moment that feels like fucking forever, Grantaire’s mind going a thousand miles per hour, spinning out.

 

“It’s not—”

 

“What?”

 

“You’re not—”

 

“No. No, I’m not—”

 

“Good. Yeah. Good.” Grantaire swipes sweaty palms on his thighs. Humorless laugh, breathless. “I mean, I didn’t think—that you two had—it’s—”

 

“We both know who’s responsible for this.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Montparnasse, man.” Grantaire spits the name out. Combeferre scoffs quietly.

 

“I think that they both share the blame equally.”

 

“Blame?” How unlike Combeferre, Grantaire thinks. To lay blame on someone—on Éponine, of all people…

 

“It takes two people, R.” Combeferre shakes his head. “Look, shit happens, man. But they’re both responsible. I think we both know why it happened, too.”

 

“Well, they’re obviously fucking,” Grantaire says quickly.

 

“I meant more along the lines of. You know.” Combeferre pauses somewhat delicately. “Some night when they were both drunk. Or high. Or both.”

 

_Oh, god._

 

“Sure, probably.” But his lips barely move. Grantaire swallows hard.

 

“Yeah, it’s unfortunate.” Combeferre looks over his shoulder into the flat, then turns back to Grantaire. “I think that horrible, because Éponine is one of the smartest girls I know.” He rubs at his eyelids. “But, you know, she’ll…”

 

“Yeah, right.” There’s a moment of silence as they ponder the unthinkable, and Grantaire is certain that they’re both trying very hard not to imagine Éponine going to some under-the-table place, alone. Grantaire isn’t squeamish in any sense of the word but he feels suddenly and deeply sickened.

 

“I’ve got to…”

 

“Me, too.” Combeferre says, too quickly. They stare at each other. There is a sense of quiet panic, Grantaire thinks, fear for Éponine, for growing up too quickly, for leaving things behind and throwing things away and new things coming suddenly and rapidly up on the horizon.

 

Grantaire walks home, even though it takes him forty-five minutes and the sun is going down and it’s getting cold. The wind knifes through his jacket and slaps him hard across the face. He can't stop thinking that god,  _god_ _,_ of course he knows now what happened, what happened with Éponine, it had been that fucking night that he'd walked in on her and Montparnasse fucking—had it been, though? How long did that sort of...thing...take? Weeks? A month? Two? Grantaire had skipped sex ed to smoke behind the school building and in all honesty this really isn't his area of expertise...

 

He wants to go get drunk, because when he’s high he thinks about everything too much and when he’s drunk he doesn’t think about anything at all. Except, irrevocably, Enjolras.

 

It’s a problem, Grantaire thinks, but picturing Enjolras’ face keeps his mind off the bite of the wind, and he’s never felt this way about anyone before so how is he supposed to know if it’s right or not? Maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe this is what all the songs and movies and shitty novels are raving about—this I can’t stop thinking about you thing that’s going on. Maybe this is—

 

It’s not. He kicks himself mentally. Walks a little faster. He wants to be home before dark. The sun’s already down behind the rooftops, and it’s getting colder.

 

______________

 

Grantaire’s father sits at the head of the table like a statue, his gaze something just short of stony. There are dark circles under his eyes, a sort of hazy glassiness to them.

 

“How’s school?”

 

Grantaire starts. He isn’t accustomed to being asked questions; they rarely eat together, as a family, and when they do it feels like a farce. Like they’re pretending to be a proper family, a real family.

 

“Fine.”

 

“Fine? Nothing more to say?”

 

“No.”

 

“What classes are you taking?”

 

Grantaire says nothing. He looks briefly at his mother—she glances away, won’t meet his eye—and stares at his plate.

 

“I said—”

 

“Literature, English, Maths, Art and Political Science.” Grantaire recites hurriedly, not meeting his father’s eye.

 

“And how are you doing?”

 

“Alright.” Then, because he’s being scrutinized, “I’m acing Art. Doing okay in everything else.”

 

“Art won’t make you a living.”

 

Grantaire chews hard on his lower lip. “Je sais.”

 

“I mean it, too. All these young people, they think they can piss around with—art, music, all that shit. Good for nothing. Can’t make a living off it.”

 

“I never said I wanted a career in it, Papa.” The words are poisonous on his tongue. “I just like it. Studying it.”

 

“Not much to study.”

 

Grantaire can’t look at his father.

 

“We’re only glad that you’re doing well.” His mother reaches out, puts her hand on top of Grantaire’s. Her palm is cold and dry.

 

“Well? He never said well. He said alright.”

 

“I meant—” Grantaire begins, but the words catch in his throat. A curt look from his father mutes him; they finish the meal in stiff silence.

 

After supper, when Grantaire is helping his mother clear the dishes away, his father’s hand descends on his shoulder.

 

“Put those down.”

 

Grantaire looks down at the stack of plates. His sternum tightens with fear.

 

“Come outside. Right now.”

 

“It’s snowing,” Grantaire says, somewhat dumbly. His mother is rinsing the dishes, the radio turned up loud, tuned to a news station.

 

“You little shit,” his father growls, and seizes Grantaire by his shirt collar. He hauls him out into the hall, down three flights of stairs and into the narrow alleyway behind the flats. The air is sudden as a slap and bitterly cold. It barely registers with Grantaire; his father shoves him up against the wall, hard. Frigid bricks dig into his back, between his shoulder blades.

 

“I’ve had a letter, you know.” Up close, his father’s breath stinks like alcohol, thick and pungent. “From the school.”

 

Grantaire doesn’t have time to respond, although an excuse is already forming on his lips. His father draws back and hits him hard across the face, open-handed. The slap is sharp, and a report echoes against the walls like a shotgun going off. Grantaire flinches back, nearly crying out. His cheek stings.

 

“You’re failing Maths. Failing.”

 

“Are you surprised?” He chokes the words out, fingers flying up to cover his cheek.

 

Grantaire doesn’t even see his father move, but a fist comes up and hits him in the nose. Grantaire gasps involuntarily. Tears spring to his eyes but he blinks them away.

 

“No. Not surprised.” Grantaire’s father spits on the ground at Grantaire’s feet—a quick and vicious movement—and then turns around. “Don’t come inside tonight,” he says. “I don’t want your mother to worry.”

 

He goes into the hallway and up the stairs, footsteps loud. Rage rises and spins, hot and loud in Grantaire’s chest. He screams, the noise tearing raw from his throat, and punches hard at the wall. The knuckles of his right hand split; and now there’s pain in his cheek and nose and fingers and god fucking dammit he could kick the entire world right now, swing punches until he fucking drops.

 

He doesn’t have a jacket, but Grantaire starts walking. He’s not sure where he’s going. Halfway down the street he feels wet on his upper lip and touches it absentmindedly, his fingers coming away bloody.

 

“Fucking wonderful.” He swipes at it hastily; he’s walking north, following a familiar path, and doesn’t realize that he’s in front of Éponine’s building until he looks up and sees her lighted bedroom window.

 

The thought of speaking to anyone right now is horrifying, and the thought of speaking to Éponine frightening enough to drive Grantaire into a brisk walk—also courtesy of the cold, which is gnawing through his shirt—north, and west, and north again, until the names of streets become familiar.

 

He phones Jehan and takes refuge beside a newspaper stand with an electric heater. The vendor gives him a dirty look but Grantaire doesn’t mind. He’s used to being pegged as a junkie—bloody nose, trembling hands, battered knuckles and no jacket.

 

“Yeah?” Jehan sounds high when he answers the phone. High, or tired.

 

“Um, I’m on your corner right now.” Grantaire is shaking, his whole body trembling, and he suddenly feels on the edge of tears. His voice cracks. “Can I stay at yours for a while?”

 

“Of course, my god, of course.” There’s the sound of shuffling. “I’m coming downstairs.”

 

Grantaire hangs up and hurries to the front of Jehan’s building—a tall white complex with cluttered balconies—and, looking up, recognizes Jehan’s bedroom by the prayer flags in the window.

 

Jehan meets him outside. He looks shocked at Grantaire’s appearance, gaping at the bloody nose, but covers it well. He puts an arm around Grantaire and guide him into an ancient lift, and then down a bright hallway and into his flat. Mrs. Prouvaire is sitting at the kitchen table in a pantsuit, smoking a cigarette and doing paperwork. When she sees Grantaire she shoots to her feet.

 

“My God,” she cries.

 

“I’m fine,” Grantaire says quickly, because he’s afraid that if someone shows him kindness right now he’s going to cry. Jehan’s mother does, though. She plies him with bandaids and disinfectant and asks him what happened.

 

“I got into a fight. Some guy on the street harassing women.” It’s a lie, but it sounds noble. Jehan hovers in the doorway. He smells like marijuana smoke, and when Mrs. Prouvaire has released Grantaire Jehan hurries him down the hall and into his bedroom, and hastily offers him a joint.

 

“No. Thanks.” Grantaire feels gloomy and empty, and doesn’t want to get high because it will make him think about everything too much, feel too much a part of the world. He doesn’t want to feel a part of the world; he wants to feel far away.

 

Jehan smokes a joint and writes Grantaire a poem, and reads it aloud. It’s beautiful and makes Grantaire feel lonely, and when Jehan’s finished he goes into the bathroom and cries over the sink for a long time. When he comes back out Jehan says,

 

“Is everything okay?”

 

“Yeah.” Pause. “No, actually. Not really.”

 

“Who did that to you?”

 

“My dad.”

 

“Shit.” Jehan puts his head back and exhales smoke. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

 

“It’s alright.”

 

“Can I ask...why?”

 

“I’m failing Maths.” Grantaire laughs, low and miserable. “My dad got a letter home, I guess.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

Grantaire looks at Jehan. He wants to laugh again; that’s become a trademark of his: humorless laughter. Bleak, humorless laughter.

 

“You know,” he says softly, “I have no fucking idea.”

 

_________________

 

December hurtles up fast and cold. Éponine begins to disappear for days at a time, presumably holing up at Montparnasse’s place (Grantaire isn’t sure where it is, but he imagines that it’s either a shithole or really, really nice). With the weather taking a turn for the worse, it’s straight back and forth between school and home (home being his bedroom, with the door locked); he doesn’t really have the motivation to find a party, let alone haul himself out in the godforsaken cold to attend one.

 

The single light in Grantaire’s life is Enjolras.

 

He embraces the patheticness of this wholeheartedly; welcomes it, even. Enjolras is hesitant to do anything other than kiss, or walk halfway home with Grantaire. It’s small moments that do it—when Grantaire kisses Enjolras goodbye on the street corner, when they clasp hands in the cold, when he waits outside the Political Science classroom under the pretense of asking Enjolras a question about the homework, and really all he wants to do is speak with Enjolras, talk about something that makes the sparks glint behind Enjolras’ eyes.

 

It isn’t much, but he takes what he can get. Life’s taught him this much, at least: take what you can and run with it.

 

And does Grantaire run.

 

———————

 

“Hey.” Grantaire shifts his textbooks under his arm, leaning against Enjolras’ classroom door.

 

“Hello, Grantaire.” Enjolras flicks off the lights. When Grantaire tries to lean in for a kiss Enjolras sidesteps, smoothly and cleanly. “Did you have a—question, or…?”

 

Grantaire drops the act in an instant. “I think you know the answer to that.”

 

“I’d hoped that…” Enjolras trails off as he starts down the hallway. Grantaire matches him stride for stride; he won’t fall behind.

 

“Hoped that what?”

 

“It’s getting late, I have to be—” Enjolras glances at his wristwatch, shouldering open the door at the end of the hall. It’s a rear exit, intended for faculty use. Cold wind swirls inside, smelling like snow.

 

“Hoped that what?”

 

“Look.” Enjolras stops in his tracks. He slumps, and for the first time Grantaire recognizes an air of disturbing defeat about him. “I don’t know about this, Grantaire.”

 

All the air goes out of Grantaire’s chest. Just like that. Empty.

 

“...about what?”

 

He knows, he knows, oh, god, of course he fucking knows, how could he possibly not?

 

“All...this.” Enjolras’ broad gesture sweeps away three months of illumination, three months of giddy happiness and intoxicating yearning. “Can we be honest with each other?”

 

Grantaire is dimly aware of nodding.

 

“This isn’t going to work out. Hiding everything. Our entire relationship being built around what is essentially a lie. If the administration were to discover what’s been going on, I would be fired and you would be expelled. I’m not even sure that they’d give you a hearing or a committee, Grantaire.”

 

“I don’t care!” Grantaire cries, his throat hot and tight with panic. “I don’t care about that, I care about you, fuck, I care about you, Enjolras!”

 

Enjolras makes a sound of dissent and turns his head away.

 

“This was a mistake.”

 

Grantaire opens his mouth, but the only word that slips out is please, and Enjolras is staring at him for a single swift moment and then turning, disappearing down the stairs, shoes loud on the frozen iron. And Grantaire watches him walk across the snowy carpark to the gate, and wants to shout stop after him, or wait or I can’t let you do this to me, but it’s like trying to grab handfuls of water, and he ends up letting the door slam inches from his nose, the sound echoing down the hallway like the report of a fucking gun.

 

______________

 

He ransacks his bedroom until he finds the creased slip of paper, stained with some unidentifiable liquid that’s probably beer, and then opens his window and slides out onto the fire escape, punching the number into his cell phone.

 

_____________

 

“I’m surprised that you remembered my number.”

 

“I wrote it down, actually.” Grantaire ducks his head in ill-disguised shame. “That night, after the party. When I got home I wrote it down before your marker washed off my arm.”

 

“That’s sweet.” The guy lights up a cigarette. They’ve met up on a stretch of pavement beside the Seine, under a long line of leafless plane trees. Grantaire wants to spit it isn’t sweet, it isn’t sweet at all, I wanted to fuck you because you remind me of someone I wanted to fuck even more.

 

He feels like he’s choking. He says, “I want you to fuck me.”

 

The guy laughs, like this is something he hears frequently. If they weren’t alone on the street, if the shit weather hadn’t driven everyone else indoors, would he have laughed the same way?

 

“My place isn’t far.”

 

“I’ll go,” Grantaire says quickly, desperately. “Wherever you want, I’ll go.”

 

“Okay.” The guy laughs again, and exhales smoke in Grantaire’s direction. “I don’t even know your name, kid.”

 

“Don’t call me kid.”

 

The guy looks at him again. “Come on, then.”

 

Grantaire follows, shaky with nervousness and wanting. In the daylight the guy doesn’t really look so much like Enjolras—his nose is different, his cheekbones less high and graceful—and he lacks Enjolras’ natural grace and fluidity of movement, the suggestion of assertiveness that really fucking turns Grantaire on.

 

But the guy is attractive and arrogant and if Grantaire doesn’t look at his face for too long he could be—should be—Enjolras. And that works.

 

The guy’s flat is ground-floor, dim and cluttered. As soon as they’re in the door he shoves Grantaire up against the wall and kisses him hard and ruthless, pushing his tongue between Grantaire’s teeth.

 

“You’re so hot, you know that?” The guy breathes, but this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and Grantaire needs more.

 

“I want you to hurt me,” he says. “I want to—I want to need to—”

 

The guy pulls away. “Oh,” he says. There’s a weird hard light in his eyes. “I get it.”

 

Grantaire licks his lips, a nervous tic. “Is that…?”

 

“Oh, it’s more than okay.”

 

Grantaire watches mutely as the guy crosses the room, digs through a cluttered dresser and returns with a length of rope. It’s black, looks a little like nylon. Grantaire swallows hard.

 

“I’m going to tie you up. You like that?” The guy drags a chair from the corner, knocking unfolded clothing and socks off of it as he does so. “You like being tied up?”

 

“Um.”

 

“You will. You’ll like it.”

 

The guy is fishing around in his drawers again, digging out a bottle of lube, a foil packet of condoms.

 

“Uh,” Grantaire twists his hands, laughs nervously. “Shouldn’t we have, like, a safeword, or something?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“You know.” He’s blushing, his cheeks heating up. “If I want you to stop.”

 

“Trust me, sweetheart,” the guy says softly, coming up behind Grantaire and pressing a hot, wet kiss to his neck. “You won’t want me to stop.”

 

And at first Grantaire doesn’t. His heart is pounding in his chest as he lets the smirking blond stranger who definitely is not Enjolras tie his hands behind his back, and push him down onto the chair, and he’s already painfully hard, and he closes his eyes and leans up into the stranger’s kiss.

 

“You want me to touch you?”

 

“Yes,” Grantaire breathes, and he thinks this isn’t so bad, and the guy is tipping lube into his hand and wrapping his fingers around Grantaire’s cock. It’s been so fucking long since someone else touched him; the last person, Grantaire realizes with a sickening jolt, had been Enjolras.

 

“You like this?”

 

Grantaire nods, keening wordlessly; the feeling of someone else’s hand on him is enough to make him forget about Enjolras, about the snowy carpark and the slamming door.

 

“Good.” The hand pulls away. Grantaire opens his eyes. The guy is unbuckling his belt, stripping it off. Unzipping his jeans. “If you want more, you’ll earn it.”

 

Grantaire says, “Huh?”

 

Then the guy is shoving his cock in Grantaire’s face, saying “suck it”, and Grantaire does. It makes him kind of sick, practically choking on some stranger’s dick, but he’s still so hard it hurts, and he tells himself that he’s sucking Enjolras off, that’s what’s happening, there’s nothing disgusting or wrong about this because it’s Enjolras.

 

But Enjolras wouldn’t moan like that, wouldn’t say, “fuck, yeah, suck it” like this is some cheap porn flick, wouldn’t grab Grantaire’s hair and thrust viciously into his mouth. At some point Grantaire is dimly aware of gasping, stop, or something akin to it, but he’s ignored.

 

The stranger comes suddenly, gasping and growling “yes, yes”, and Grantaire swallows because he knows that he’s expected to. His eyes are watering and he shouldn’t still be hard but he is, so hard that when the guy zips up his pants and turns his attentions to Grantaire it’s almost unbearable.

 

“Please touch me,” Grantaire hisses, ashamed that he’s even uttering those words.

 

Then the stranger’s hand is on him, touching him smoothly and Grantaire is on the edge within minutes, thrusting up into the guy’s fist, moaning openly.

 

“Are you going to come?”

 

“Yes,” Grantaire says, the word punctuated with a low moan because there’s a thumb flicking over the head of his cock.

 

“Wait.” The hand pulls away again. Grantaire whines and thrashes against his bonds; he’s beginning to regret this, he just needs to come oh god he can’t even think straight he needs release like air.

 

The guy tips more lube onto his fingers, and Grantaire understands in a rush what’s happening. The guy strips off Grantaire’s boxers and puts a hand around Grantaire’s cock and then slides a finger inside him.

 

“Oh, god,” Grantaire cries. He’s certain that he’s about to come when the stranger stops.

 

“Stand up.” He’s going for his zipper again, and Grantaire is seized with sudden and consuming panic.

 

“No, wait.” He struggles to untie himself (what the fuck kind of knot did this guy do?) but it’s all in vain. “Wait, don’t.”

 

“I said, stand up.”

 

“Don’t!” Grantaire says, too loudly. “I don’t want to—I’ve never—”

 

This isn’t actually true, strictly speaking, but he’d really rather not think about his past sexual exploits, because they suddenly seem terrible and distant and things that he doesn’t really want to repeat, and especially not now, not here in some guy’s messy bedroom, tied to a chair.

 

“Oh.” The stranger is smirking. _Enjolras wouldn’t do this_ , Grantaire thinks dumbly. “A virgin.”

 

“I just…”

 

“I thought you said,” the stranger says softly, “that you wanted me to hurt you.”

 

Not like that, Grantaire thinks.

 

But what he thinks doesn’t matter, because the guy is content with jerking him off and sliding two fingers inside him. But it hurts. It does hurt. It’s not a pleasure-pain, not the kind that Grantaire likes; it’s rough and painful and tears are running down his cheeks and he keeps moaning and feeling disgusting for that, and then he’s begging the guy to stop, to just stop already please, he doesn’t even care about coming anymore.

 

“You’re getting too loud.” Before Grantaire can protest, a strip of wadded-up fabric is shoved in his mouth; it tastes like bleach and smells, faintly, of cigarette smoke. Grantaire moans against it, throws his head back. He’s shaking with the pain of it all, and when he comes he actually screams, legs jerking, throwing himself back against the chair, and the only thought, clear and cold between his temples, is: _this is what you wanted_.

 

________________

 

“Good boy,” the stranger says, and unties Grantaire’s hands. Grantaire spits out the makeshift gag and pulls on his boxers and jeans. He finishes dressing in shameful silence. The stranger watches him, lips pulled into a thin, unfriendly smirk.

 

Grantaire is tugging his jacket over his shoulders when the guy says,

 

“What’s your name?”

 

“Jean,” Grantaire lies without thinking.

 

“Jean. Pretty name. I’m—”

 

“No,” Grantaire says, pausing in the doorway. Snow swirls in around his ankles. “Don’t say it.” He pauses. In the gray light the stranger looks less like Enjolras than before. “I don’t want to know.”

 

_______________

 

Wednesday afternoon Grantaire slinks into Political Science just as the bell rings, claiming a seat in the back row. The students around him are texting and dozing, not paying attention to Enjolras’ impassioned lecture about voting demographics. There’s definitely some kind of message there: about young people voting, etc., etc., democracy…

 

Grantaire is pulled back to earth only when Enjolras poses a question.

 

“So, what can be inferred by looking at these recent demographics?”

 

His gaze flickers around the classroom. It passes over Grantaire, a stone hurled over water, barely touching down. That cuts Grantaire like a fucking knife. There’s no flash of private acknowledgment, no recognition. Only blankness, like Grantaire is just another vaguely-unfamiliar face in the back of the classroom, a kid who Enjolras knows only by the name printed on the roster and their homework assignments. Being stabbed would probably hurt less.

 

“Éponine? Could you explain?”

 

In the front row, Éponine’s shoulders are curled in. Grantaire can see only the tangle of her dark hair.

 

Silence.

 

“No.”

 

“No?” Enjolras arches an eyebrow. “Would you like to postulate?”

 

Éponine pauses. “I’m not...I don’t know. I really have no idea.”

 

Enjolras nods. “Okay. That’s alright. This is difficult. Babet, would you like to hazard a guess?”

 

Babet makes some stupid comment, and someone else shouts him down from the middle of the room, and Jehan articulates some well-worded comment about how youth are oppressed by living at home and their voting demographics are influenced by parental political affiliations.

 

Grantaire sketches endless penciled images in his notebook; Enjolras teaching, gesturing, rendered in hard strokes. He can’t look up, can’t look at Enjolras in person. It hurts far, far too much.

 

_______________

 

That night there’s a party near the Sorbonne—a group of university students who Grantaire knows by association only, but who have a reputation for throwing great, wild parties—and Grantaire scrapes enough money to go and get really fucked up.

 

He needs to, and recognizes that it’s a problem that he’s actually pre-meditating this kind of thing. The thought strikes him fast and hard while he’s on the train—that he’s doing this to himself for the same reason he let a stranger tie him up and fuck his mouth, because he wants to forget about his life for a while—but suddenly his internal monologue is being reeled out in Combeferre’s most rational voice, and Grantaire forces himself to shut the hell up before he takes the next train home.

 

Within fifteen minutes of entering the flat, he’s drunk two plastic cups full of vodka, inhaled an ungodly amount of marijuana smoke, and been offered cocaine by three different people. The third offer feels too good to refuse. Grantaire’s done coke only once, and felt like shit afterwards, but he recalls the high as being really fucking excellent. He bends over the bathroom counter and inhales the line. There’s a guy peeing in the bathtub.

 

The high kicks in almost immediately, and Grantaire finds himself hanging off of some guy’s shoulder, fast friends, talking about music, or something, and going in search of drinks. They find some rum, but Grantaire hates the taste of rum. He pours himself more vodka, and when he turns around the guy has vanished.

 

Music is throbbing everywhere now, someone’s turned on a strobe light that throws crazy colors and patterns against the wall, and Grantaire heads for the door in what feels like slow motion. He’s laughing, feels light with a euphoria that evaporates at once when he sees—

 

“Éponine?”

 

“What?” She turns around, holding a red plastic cup in her left hand and a joint in her right. She’s standing in the narrow entrance hall, in a press of people from which she quickly frees herself.

 

“What the hell are you…” Grantaire trails off, disoriented. “Thinking, ‘Ponine?”

 

She laughs. It’s a bitter, unpleasant sound. “Why?”

 

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” he says quietly. “You’re…”

 

“What?” Éponine scoffs, holds the joint up dramatically. “Knocked up? In a family way? Expecting?”

 

Grantaire nods mutely. He’s never seen Éponine like this; yeah, he’s seen her strung out more times than he safely count, he’s seen her drunk and too high to walk, but she’s a happy drunk, she’s the girl who sings on tabletops and kisses people and enjoys herself, enjoys forgetting about her siblings and family shit and her terrible parents. This Éponine is old, and dark, and a stranger. This Éponine is getting drunk and high not with the goal of forgetting about her life, but about herself.

 

“I’m glad to see that you’ve come around, R.” She inhales, pauses. Lifts the cup to her lips and drinks. Grantaire imagines the alcohol coursing down her throat, warm and dangerous. “Nice to have a voice of reason in these trying times.”

 

And then she’s gone. Grantaire isn’t even sure who she’d come with, if Montparnasse is here somewhere.

 

He starts to feel jittery again, electrified. If he jumped off a balcony right now, he’d probably be fine. Hell, he’d probably fucking land on his feet. Grantaire, dancing with a strange girl, throws his head back and laughs with the wonderful absurdity of it all.

 

It’s only when he’s headed home in the back of a cab, about a second from either vomiting or passing out or both, the high fading into deep and filthy depression, does Grantaire realize that up until this very moment he hasn’t thought about Enjolras all evening.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know that the ending is a little iffy (kind of boring, i know, i know), but rest assured that another chapter is in the works!
> 
> also shoutout to both vikings and hannibal being back from hiatus this week! (both are really rad shows, i'm not sure if you all watch but i'd highly recommend both shows!)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry that this took so long to publish! i had a few weeks of tech rehearsals for theatre, and then our opening weekend. the show closed last week and i've had huge volumes of schoolwork to catch up on! but now i've got free time, so you can expect more chapters in coming days!

“The assessment will be given on Wednesday,” Enjolras says. “I’m confident that you’ll all receive high marks if you study.” He fixes the class with a mock-stern glare. Some laughter, a few sighs.

 

In the back row, Grantaire ducks his head, staring at his hands. He’s been sick with nervousness all class, waiting for the bell to ring. It does, and a sort of controlled chaos rises as students shuffle for the door. Jehan pushes his way to Grantaire, stands there with his fingers interlocked.

 

“Coming?”

 

“Yeah.” Desperation rises in Grantaire’s chest. “Um. I actually need to ask about. Something. For the exam.”

 

“The upcoming exam?”

 

“Uh-huh.” Grantaire nods, cramming his notebook into his backpack. Jehan glances down, and when he looks up their eyes meet. In an instant, Grantaire knows that Jehan knows. There’s no mistaking the look of recognition in Jehan’s eyes.

 

Shit. Shit fucking hell I should’ve been more subtle—

 

“I’ll be in the library,” Jehan says, gently. “If you want to come study together next period.”

 

“Fine, sure. Fine.” Grantaire’s blushing now. He lifts his backpack with trembling hands, slings it over his shoulders. “See you.”

 

Jehan vanishes into the crowd of students, and the noise dies down as they leave. Grantaire, alone in the classroom, approaches Enjolras’ desk.

 

“Grantaire.” Enjolras’ voice is measured, controlled.

 

“You probably don’t want to see me right now.” Why is his voice shaking like this? “That’s why I sat in the back of the room.”

 

Enjolras inhales, exhales deeply. He’s rearranging things on his desk, but they’re useless movements. “I’m surprised that you came to class, frankly.”

 

“Why are you surprised?”

 

“Your MO seems to be…”

 

“Hiding out when I’m scared? Not showing my face?” The words bite a little, and Enjolras snorts softly under his breath. Neither can deny that it’s true. Grantaire’s never felt more of a coward.

 

“I wasn’t trying to be harsh.”

 

“I know.” Grantaire thrusts his hands into his pockets. “I just…”

 

“Grantaire—”

 

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire blurts, the words tumbling from his lips before he can stop them. “I’m sorry that I—that we—started doing—this, or whatever it was, and I’m sorry that we got into it with each other and I know that it wasn’t a lot, it wasn’t anything that you could call a relationship and maybe I shouldn’t even say tht, maybe I shouldn’t call it that but whatever it was was really the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time and I want it back.”

 

Those words: I want it back, hang in the air, stiff, awkward.

 

Enjolras stares at Grantaire, and his gaze is bottomless. Grantaire is light-headed with desperation.

 

“You understand, though, don’t you?” Shifting some folders on the desktop, Enjolras looks down. “Why this wouldn’t work out?”

 

“No. I don’t.”

 

Enjolras says, “okay”. There’s a long silence, something that becomes a wall between them, and Grantaire can’t fucking stand it. In a single swift movement he leans forward, takes the front of Enjolras’ shirt and pulls Enjolras against him, pressing their mouths together.

 

It’s quick and Enjolras jerks himself away, eyes going wide.

 

“Grantaire.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Grantaire chokes. “Shit, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

 

“Don’t.” Enjolras moves around his desk, stands in front of Grantaire. “Don’t apologize.” His hands go to Grantaire’s shoulders; gentle. “Please.”

 

They kiss each other and it feels like slow motion, like the world’s stopped about Grantaire and there is only the feel of Enjolras’ lips against his, and Enjolras’ hands on his shoulders and his hands on Enjolras’ chest.

 

When Enjolras shifts away it’s like a sun being thrown out of orbit, and Grantaire finds himself leaning forward, fingers still curled around the fabric of Enjolras’ shirt.

 

They look at each other, caught in suspension. Midair. Enjolras’ lips curve into a slow, unmistakable smile, and suddenly he’s laughing under his breath; a quiet, desperate laugh.

 

He says, “this is such a mistake,”

 

“I know.” Grantaire’s fingers tangle with Enjolras’, and he’s about fucking delirious with happiness, “I know, I know.”

 

“We can’t keep doing this.” The smile’s slipping, and then fading, slowly. “We really can’t.”

 

“You can’t stay away,” Grantaire says.

 

Enjolras looks at him—steadily—and for a moment Grantaire fears that Enjolras is going to say yes, I can, order him out of the room, make everything horrifically final, dead-ended.

 

“Come here,” he says, and kisses Grantaire again.

 

______________

  
  


“I did so much stupid shit,” Grantaire murmurs against Enjolras’ cheek. “When you said this wasn’t a good idea, I went out and did so much stupid shit.”

 

Enjolras pulls away gently. Grantaire sees the flash behind his eyes and knows at once that he shouldn’t have divulged this information.

 

Fuck.

 

“I need to get ready for my next class,” Enjolras says, softly, but Grantaire knows that it’s more than that, that Enjolras is unnerved by him in the same way that Grantaire is often unnerved by himself; frightened by his potential to do terrible stupid things, frightened by his emotions, by any emotions.

 

“Right.” His backpack feels like a dead weight between his shoulder blades. “Right. Okay. See you later.”

 

But as he goes out into the hallway, he feels nothing short of elated.

 

____________

 

“So.” Jehan opens his sketchbook, flips to a page already half-covered in loose sketches. Hands, Grantaire sees. Drawings of a dozen hands, in different positions: holding cigarettes, gesturing, folded. They’re sitting at a cafeteria table, students whirling around them as the lunch period ends and their free period begins.

 

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Grantaire blurts, the words spilling out in a desperate rush. “They’d give him the boot if they knew.”

 

“What do you think they’d do to you?” Jehan raises his eyebrows, the pencil tip coming down on the paper.

 

“Oh, I don’t care.” It’s true; it stings a little, admitting it, but it’s true. “I don’t care half as much about all this shit as he does.”

 

Jehan makes a sound of dissent.

 

“It’s true.”

 

Jehan moves his head to the side, a tilting motion as if to say and it’s a shame.

 

“But really,” Grantaire plunges onward, “you can’t tell anyone. Not—Éponine—I don’t know, not Combeferre, no one. No one can know.”

 

“How long has this been going on?”

 

“A while.”

 

“So, have you…?”

 

Grantaire watches Jehan fish a pencil sharpener from his backpack. He jams the graphite pencil into the sharpener in a swift and sudden motion whose connotations are not lost on Grantaire.

 

“Uh. No.”

 

“But you’re planning to.”

 

Fuck. “It’s not really...like that.”

 

“What do you mean?” Jehan twists the pencil in the sharpener.

 

“It’s not that simple. He keeps trying to call things off. Say that it’s not working out, saying that if we get—” and Grantaire lowers his voice as a group of younger students pass by “—caught, his job’ll be on the line.”

 

“Which it would be.”

 

“I know.” Grantaire is laughing with sad desperation, with hope and the relief and fear that someone else knows. “I know, I know.”

 

“I hope that things…” Jehan returns to sketching, seems to search for the right thing to say. “Work out. You know.”

 

Grantaire stands up slowly. He laughs again. He wants a cigarette, wants to inhale and hold it in his mouth and the back of his throat, his lungs. He wants to be high and think about nothing but Enjolras and he wants to be sober and think about nothing but Enjolras, think about the clarity of Enjolras’ hands on his shoulders and lips against his.

 

“I hope so, too.”

 

______________

 

Grantaire doesn’t see Enjolras for the rest of the day, takes the train home in the afternoon. His parents aren’t home. He goes online and talks with Combeferre for awhile, but then Combeferre has to go off and do his volunteer shift at the hospital, and Grantaire is left alone. He sends two texts to Éponine, but she doesn’t respond.

 

He thinks about her with Montparnasse—and god knows where she actually is—and feels a little sick.

 

His phone rings at around eleven, and Grantaire, already in bed, fumbles around in the dark trying to find it.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Hey.”

 

It’s an unfamiliar voice, a man’s voice. Grantaire had expected the caller, foolishly, to be Éponine—hadn’t even checked the caller ID.

 

“Who is this?”

 

“You know.”

 

“No, I don’t,” Grantaire says, but then he recognizes the voice; suddenly, his wrists burn at the memory. “Fuck. What the fuck? How did you get my number?”

 

“You gave it to me.”

 

“Uh, when?”

 

“The same night I gave you my number.”

 

Shit.

 

“I don’t remember that.”

 

“You remember coming all over my hand, don’t you?”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

“Wait. Don’t hang up.”

 

Grantaire pauses.

 

“Why shouldn’t I?”

 

“I want to talk to someone. You. I want to talk to you.”

 

“Why?”

 

A pause. “I’m really hard right now. So hard it hurts. Are you?”

 

“What? No.” Grantaire scoffs, loudly and derisive. “Fuck off, I’m not.”

 

“I could get you hard.”

 

“You couldn’t.” Grantaire is thinking that it would be impossible because the guy doesn’t sound like Enjolras, despite his appearance, and Grantaire’s never been turned on by the concept of phone sex, in fact finds it awkward and clumsy and frankly a pretty embarrassing idea.

 

“Not even if you think about coming into my hand? About me sucking you off? Coming into my mouth?”

 

“Stop,” Grantaire mutters, and with the knuckles of his right hand rubs at his eyelids. Visions of the blond, curly-haired stranger come quick and violent: the guy on his knees, Grantaire’s cock in his mouth, a clever tongue equally well-suited to giving head and classroom lectures…

 

“You’re getting hard, aren’t you?”

 

“Fuck off,” Grantaire murmurs, but at the same time he’s pushing his palm flat against the front of his boxers, exhaling sharply.

 

“Thinking about me sucking you off and you coming so fucking hard.”

 

“And?” Fuck, fuck you, you stupid fucking horny bastard fuck you fuck everything.

 

“And you—” and the guy breaks off to moan, slow and breathy, “—and you b—fuck—begging me to let you come.”

 

“Oh.” Grantaire jerks himself off through his boxers, rubbing the fabric over his cock, trying to keep quiet because he can’t let the stranger know how turned on he is, because it feels like betrayal.

 

“I’d make you come so hard, you’d forget your—oh—your own name.”

 

“You fucking liar,” Grantaire hisses, and shoves his hand down his pants. “Oh, god, you fucking liar.”

 

“I made you come the first time, didn’t I? And—fuck—the second?”

 

But Grantaire’s already half-gone, already pulled his cock out of his boxers and is slick with pre-cum, jerking himself off with fast and violent motions. He can hear the stranger on the other end, moaning breathlessly.

 

Grantaire himself isn’t faring much better, and comes gasping and whining into the phone barely a minute later.

 

“I—fuck—oh god, fuck—” he’s practically shaking, breathless.

 

“That was good, right?”

 

“Um.”

 

“You still there?”

 

But Grantaire is flat on his back, mute with shame.

 

“Hello? You still there, kid?”

 

Grantaire reaches over, his chest hollow, and ends the call.

 

_____________

 

The next day, Enjolras is absent from school.

 

A supply teacher fills in, but she doesn’t know much about political science and admits that, and she lets the class work on other homework. Grantaire, sprawled across the seat beside Jehan, draws rough sketches of his classmates and people he’d seen on the street this morning and everything, everyone but Enjolras.

 

“Excuse me.” The supply teacher, all dark lipstick and too-white teeth, is standing next to him. “Shouldn’t you be working on some other assignment?”

 

“Uh, no.” Grantaire closes the notebook. “I’m strictly against following set guidelines.”

 

The supply teacher lets out a sound like a scoff, unbelieving.

 

“He’s not serious,” Jehan says, quickly, and Grantaire realizes with a rush of sudden shame that if he were to be reported it would likely reflect badly on Enjolras. “We’re studying History of Art together.”

 

But Grantaire’s focus drifts. He finds himself thinking about Enjolras, worrying that maybe Enjolras’ absence has something to do with Grantaire—Enjolras hasn’t missed a single class so far this year, has in fact outright said that missing school is as bad for teachers as it is for students, so why would he willingly miss a day unless something was terribly wrong?

 

His internal monologue falters when he hears Éponine’s name.

 

“Yeah, the Thénardier girl. Hot, dark hair.” Babet is leaning over the back of his desk, talking to a band of other students, not bothering to keep his voice down in the slightest.

 

“I heard she dropped out.”

 

“Oh, I heard she got kicked out.”

 

“Yeah—well, first I heard that she got caught with drugs…”

 

“Someone told me Javert caught her in the boy’s washroom giving someone a blowjob.”

 

“No way. That’s shit.”

 

“Just what I heard.”

 

A quiet girl with dark hair—Susanna? Susenne?—says, “I heard she got pregnant.”

 

“Fuck off,” Grantaire says. “She’s not pregnant.”

 

“Yeah, she isn’t.” Jehan’s on his feet already. “Whoever told you that is obviously trying to perpetrate a toxic lie. Éponine’s been looking after her younger siblings. She’s going through some family issues.”

 

Family issues is something that most students can relate to—a drunk parent, an absent parent, a parent in jail or in a brothel, working or visiting—and the group falls silent.

 

Jehan casts several curious, probing glances in Grantaire’s direction, but Grantaire refuses to look at him for the remainder of class. Instead, he turns his attentions to his History of Art textbook (he’s brought it to school, a rarity), which he’s fallen grossly behind in.

 

They’re learning about Rome now, and there are way too many fucking temples and ruins and everything’s either white marble or grey marble or goddamn brick. All the names — names and more names, and the names of eras, and of minor gods and goddesses and of emperors and builders and sculptors — blur together until Grantaire is shaking his head, unable to concentrate, unable to absorb it all, or any of it.

 

“Fuck this.” He shuts the book. It’s about time for the bell, anyways. He can feel himself slipping behind again and hates himself for it. It’s that horrible sinking sensation when you realize that you’ve got two tests and a minor assessment and an oral exam within the next twenty-four hours and you haven’t prepared enough for any of them.

 

“If you need help, I can lend you my notes.” Jehan, who keeps careful notes in a spiral notebook, offers as they leave the Political Science classroom.

 

“I’m fine.” So, he’s too proud now? Too good to accept help? Fuck.

 

“Okay. Just ask if you want them.” Jehan’s hand catches momentarily at Grantaire’s, and then he’s gone, vanishing into a thick crowd of students.

 

Grantaire heads straight down the hall, into the gray corridors of the Administration offices. The complex of offices is cramped and gray, lit harshly, and Grantaire approaches the front desk with some hesitation.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Yes.” The woman behind the desk is chewing mint gum—he can smell it in the air, cloying—and doesn’t look up from her computer, a hulking outdated desktop.

 

“I’m looking for a teacher’s phone number. Or possibly address.”

 

“I can’t give you that.” She stops typing and looks up. She could be Grantaire’s aunt, his mother. She looks tired. “What’re you looking for, anyways? Can’t you contact the teacher here?”

 

“It’s for—” now he’s guessing wildly, inventing. “An assignment, and the teacher is out today, so…”

 

“Email?”

 

Shit. “Oh, he told us that he doesn’t have wireless right now. It’s, uh, patchy. You know. So.”

 

Grantaire shoves his hands in his pockets.

 

“Name?”

 

“Huh?”

 

“What’s the teacher’s name?”

 

“Oh. Enjolras. Monsieur Enjolras.” His heart is beating quickly. The secretary enters some information, waits for a moment, reads out a phone number. Then she stops.

 

A phone is ringing somewhere deep inside one of the offices—a terrible jangling—and she stands up to answer it.

 

“Wait here.”

 

While she’s gone, Grantaire has no qualms about craning his neck over the desk, seizing a pen from the desk and scrawling Enjolras’ address across the back of his hand. When the secretary returns, he’s already halfway across the schoolyard, headed south into a driving rainstorm.

 

_____________

  
  


The address leads him to a plain brick building not far from the school, and near enough to the Seine that he can smell the water. The rain hasn’t abated, but Grantaire stands shivering on the sidewalk for several minutes, hands folded up into his armpits, wondering if he should ring the bell or not.

 

What if he doesn’t want to see me? What if he doesn’t let me in—or worse, slams the door in my face? Fuck, this was stupid. No, no, fuck that, fuck that, this is all I want, and it’s everything I need and it’s right here, it’s right here just go ring the bell you fucking idiot, Grantaire, god—

 

He strides up to the door and pushes the bell hard.

 

There’s a moment of silence. Grantaire thinks that maybe Enjolras hasn’t heard him, or that the bell is broken, but someone throws open an upstairs window.

 

“Who’s there?”

 

Grantaire looks up. A young woman with very short dark hair is leaning over a windowsill.

 

“Is Enjolras home?”

 

She pauses. “I’ll send him down.”

 

“Thanks.” The rain is falling in sheets, thin and gray.

 

When Enjolras opens the door, Grantaire’s standing on the steps, hands in his pockets, soaked.

 

“God,” Enjolras says. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and sweatpants. “Did you walk here?”

 

“No,” Grantaire says, “I drove here in my convertible.”

 

Enjolras huffs out a soft laugh. “Come in.” He steps away from the door. “You’re soaked to the bone.”

 

“No kidding.” Grantaire follows Enjolras into a small, dim lobby with grimy black and white floor tiles. There’s no lift, so they take a flight of stairs up to the second floor. “I live on the second floor, too,” Grantaire says, and then feels stupid. Enjolras looks over his shoulder and smiles.

 

Enjolras’ flat is bright and warm and small—two rooms cluttered with papers and books and clothing—with a radiator clanking on the wall under the window.

 

“This is,” Grantaire swipes his damp palms on his jeans—it does nothing, of course, because his jeans are wet and clinging to his body—and glances around. It feels almost dreamlike, being here, in Enjolras’ flat; he’s imagined this scenario a hundred, a thousand times, but it generally involves them stumbling up the stairs half-drunk and kissing each other, and in those fantasies Enjolras’ place is unlit and clean and much nicer. There isn’t a stack of ungraded papers on the wooden table and there isn’t laundry stacked on the couch, and there isn’t a kettle on.

 

“Do you want some tea?” Enjolras goes into the kitchen, pulls two mugs from the shelf before Grantaire has time to reply. “If not, have some coffee or something. I can make it. You look freezing.”

 

“I am freezing.”

 

They stare at each other for a moment. Then Enjolras ducks his head and laughs.

 

“Tea okay?”

 

“Tea is fine.”

 

“You should dry off.”

 

“Okay.” Grantaire looks at Enjolras, suddenly acutely aware that he probably looks a little like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. “Yeah, that’s. Yeah.”

 

“Here.” Enjolras disappears behind his bedroom’s sliding door, comes back with a towel. “You should borrow clothes. You’ll get sick if you don’t.”

 

“Sure.”

 

They look at each other again, neither moving.

 

“Come on.” Enjolras swallows visibly. It sets Grantaire’s blood on fire. “In here.”

 

Chest full and tight, rain lashing the windows, and Grantaire follows Enjolras into his bedroom.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spring break has come around! I'm figuring some stuff out with college (hello life choices) so I might not be writing as much, but I'm definitely going to try to publish more chapters in coming days/weeks!

 

Enjolras’ bedroom is sparse and clean, with sheets pulled tightly over a double bed. He goes to a low chest of drawers and rifles through, pulling out a sweatshirt and flannel pants.

 

“Is this okay?”

 

“It’s fine.” Grantaire’s lips feel numb, though with cold or yearning he can’t tell.

 

“Great.” Enjolras hands them to Grantaire, who accepts the clothes silently. He’s nearly in pain, wanting to say something—anything. He can barely stand it.

 

“I found your name through the administration office. I’m not supposed to be here but I couldn’t not come, when you weren’t at school I got worried and I thought that it was something I’d done, was it something I’d done? I don’t know why I—”

 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. “I’m glad that you’re here.”

 

Silence.

 

“Me too,” Grantaire mutters.

 

“I should have been at school.”

 

“Were you sick?”

 

“A sore throat,” Enjolras says distractedly. “Nothing serious. Nothing to warrant…”

 

“Kiss me,” Grantaire says, and feels his cheeks heat. He’s rarely—almost never—been so direct. Somehow, with Enjolras, it feels okay. “Just—kiss me, please.”

 

Enjolras’ lips twitch into a sideways smile, and he steps forward and takes Grantaire’s face in his hands and they kiss, slowly. Grantaire can feel the wrongness of it reverberating between them, the illicit thrill of him being at Enjolras’ flat and his clothing still damp, sticking to his chest where his heartbeat is like a hammer.

 

He’s smiling into the kiss, smiling best he can and then he’s letting out a sort of weak gasp because he can feel that Enjolras is already hard and so’s Grantaire, and the wanting is rushing up inside of him fast and sudden.

 

He slides to his knees.

 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says; there’s a soft warning in his voice. “Grantaire, what are—”

 

But he breaks off with a shuddering moan as Grantaire pushes Enjolras’ sweatpants down and runs his tongue over his cock.

 

“Don’t,” is the only word he grits out. Grantaire knows at once what he means, and smirks.

 

“Don’t what? Debase myself?” He puts his lips around Enjolras’ cock and pushes down, nearly choking a little but alright with that because Enjolras is letting out a loud broken moan and curling his fingers around Grantaire’s curly hair, and Grantaire uses his mouth and tongue very wisely, listening to Enjolras moan softly and then loudly, thrusting into Grantaire’s mouth, moaning that he’s sorry, sorry, he’s trying not to be rough, oh god, _god, Grantaire_ —

 

He comes suddenly and hard. Grantaire, who hates swallowing, does so gladly. Enjolras pulls him to his feet, jerks his sweatpants back up, kisses Grantaire deeply. They break apart and Grantaire’s panting, breathless, his cheeks red.

 

“God,” Enjolras says, softly. His fingers are in Grantaire’s hair and on his cheeks, tilting his chin up. “You’re beautiful.”

 

Grantaire scoffs, more out of sheer embarrassment than anything. He’s never been called beautiful. The only beautiful boy he knows is Jehan; lithe and long-haired and fayish.

 

“You are,” Enjolras says. “Don’t look like that.”

 

“I’m not.” Grantaire leans in, works his mouth against Enjolras’. His tongue tastes salty. Enjolras’ fingers work over his waistband, and Grantaire arches his back, moans.

 

He’s nearly in disbelief when Enjolras unbuckles his belt, kneels down. Takes Grantaire’s cock from his boxers, looks up.

 

“Grantaire,” he says, “if you want me to stop, say—”

 

“No,” Grantaire says, quickly, the words stumbling out. “No, don’t stop, god,”

 

He throws his head back when Enjolras takes him in his mouth. The wet tongue, the way that Enjolras fucking licks drives him to the edge; he thrusts shakily into Enjolras’ mouth, the wet heat, hands trembling. He moans low and drawn-out from the back of his throat, knees buckling as he comes in quick jerks.

 

“Fuck, fuck, christ—”

He should have known that Enjolras would be good at this—of course he is—but watching Enjolras swallow makes Grantaire feel both dizzy and uneasy. How many times has Enjolras done this? Knelt on a bedroom floor and sucked some guy off? Knelt on his bedroom floor and—

 

“You’re putting me to shame,” Grantaire says, but that’s not true, and his legs are still shaking as Enjolras gets to his feet, straightens his shoulders. Kisses Grantaire fast and warm, pulls him down onto the bed.

 

“It’s not a contest, you know.”

 

“I know.” But Grantaire is grinning, unable to stop himself. Enjolras puts an arm around him and they lie there, in the gray rainy light of a stormy afternoon. He wants to feel someone else’s heartbeat under his hand. He wants to feel wanted. Does he? He should. He should feel wanted and oh god everything is gray and the water is streaking down the windows—

 

“I never should have,” Enjolras begins, and Grantaire, for a hot electric moment, is afraid of what he might say… “I never should have told you that this wouldn’t work out.”

 

Grantaire breathes out a half-laugh. His fingers clench around the fabric of Enjolras’ shirt. He feels warm and brimming with satisfaction, and maybe it’s just a biological response but maybe it’s something else, something more.

 

“We’re making this up as we go along,” Enjolras says softly.

 

“If anyone can,” Grantaire murmurs, and lets his eyelids drop, “it’s us.”

 

__________

  
  


The following Saturday, Grantaire wakes up at noon (having spent most of the night at Enjolras’ place, dicking around and pretending, fleetingly and wonderfully, that he was an adult, living entirely on his own) and wanders into the front room to find his father home.

 

“Where’s Mama?”

 

“Work.” He doesn’t stink like alcohol, and his eyes are clear. Grantaire wonders if he’s stepped through some perverted looking glass. “You went out last night?”

 

“Oui.”

 

“With who?”

 

Grantaire opens his mouth to respond, but his father looks away, shakes his head.

 

“Nevermind. I won’t know them.”

 

“Probably not.” Grantaire stretches, suddenly very aware that he’s wearing baggy flannel pants and a t-shirt that definitely belongs to Enjolras. “They’re school friends.”

 

A moment of silence. Grantaire’s father puts down his newspaper—a circulation popular with factory workers. Grantaire sees an advert on the front page; a busty woman selling tools, or insurance, or something.

 

“Are you drinking?”

 

The question takes him by surprise.

 

“Uh.”

 

“When you go out. Are you drinking?” His father meets Grantaire’s gaze, and Grantaire can’t bring himself to lie completely; a half-truth is easier.

 

“Sometimes. Beer. Or wine. Same as home. I’m not out getting shitfaced.”

 

A moment of silent implication: not like you.

 

“Good.” His father inhales sharply. He’s wearing a work shirt, denim, even though his shift doesn’t start for another three hours. “You’re too young for all that.”

 

“I’m no kid, Dad.”

 

“You are.” Grantaire’s father laughs quietly, and it isn’t a kind laugh. “You’ll see, one day. How young you are now. How stupid you all are.”

 

“We’re not all…”

 

“Long as you’re not doing drugs, you’ll turn out alright.”

 

“Never,” Grantaire says, and his father nods and picks up the newspaper again, and as Grantaire slinks back to his bedroom he feels like crying.

  
  
  
  


________

 

That Saturday, while out buying groceries at the corner store—they’re out of everything but cigarettes and eggs and cereal—Grantaire runs into Éponine.

 

“God,” he says, fumbling the plastic grocery bags into the crook of his right arm, embracing her tightly with the other. Through her jacket he can’t feel the swell of her stomach, in fact isn’t even sure that it’s there. She’s not that far along—is she? At what stage does it begin to show?

 

They kiss each others’ cheeks; Éponine smells like unfamiliar perfume and cigarettes. She looks exhausted, almost ill—pallid, her eyes underscored with circles that indicate sleeplessness. She catches Grantaire looking, smirks a little.

 

“Montparnasse,” she says lightly, and gestures downward, sweeping a hand over the jacket, the skirt and boots.

 

“He bought this? For you?”

 

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Éponine snaps. “I’m not some whore. We have a very adult relationship.”

 

“You don’t look so great, ‘Ponine.”

 

“Éponine,” she says. “‘Ponine is a name for a little girl.”

 

“You look sick, is what I mean, Éponine.”

 

“And why do you fucking think that is?” Then she looks down. She’s holding a plastic bag with cigarettes and beers. “Sorry. That was unwarranted.”

 

“Don’t apologize. You’re tired.”

 

“Well, I’m not an invalid either, Grantaire.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Anyways. I should get—” and she’s obviously going to say back, back to wherever it is that she’s headed but in the next moment Éponine’s face is twisting up and she’s bending double and hissing _fuck fuck fuck_.

 

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” Grantaire grabs her shoulder, helps her straighten up. “Shit, shit, what’s wrong?”

 

His first thought is that she’s going into labor—they’d learned about pregnancy during Health class and in movies women always bend double and curse when they’re having labor pains. In all honesty Grantaire isn’t even sure when this sort of thing is supposed to happen—nine months, right? Can anything happen before then? Some kind of...sickness? Mid-pregnancy pains? He’s certain that Combeferre would know.

 

“I’ll call 112,” he says desperately.

 

“No, don’t.” Éponine grits her teeth. “I need to get home.”

 

“Right,” Grantaire says, but Éponine is grinding out an unfamiliar address on a street that Grantaire doesn’t recognize.

 

It’s only when they’re boarding a train, swiping their Metro passes, that he realizes where they’re going.

 

 _That fucking bastard_ , he thinks, _it’s Montparnasse_.

 

__________

 

Of course Montparnasse lives in a grimy three-floor near Montparnasse (the cemetery, not the surname), and of course there isn’t a lift. Grantaire helps a wincing Éponine up the stairs—endless flights of stairs that stink like piss.

 

“Here,” she says, when they’ve reached the third floor. The hallway is full of gray light, and a young woman whose arm is marked up with horrifying track marks appears briefly in a doorway, disappears muttering to herself. Someone’s blasting MC Solaar. Grantaire digs the music but not the way that Éponine fumbles a key from her jacket pocket.

 

Montparnasse’s place is stark, all white walls and black leather furniture that’s supposed to look expensive but has a distinct IKEA aesthetic. It’s uncluttered, the only messy surface a low table covered with junk: cigarette packets and foil and—

 

“You’ve got to be shitting me.” Grantaire helps Éponine over to the couch, then leans over the table. Strips of rubber, needles. Plastic packets, grayish powder. “He’s a skag fiend, too. Lovely.”

 

“I wouldn’t say _fiend_.”

 

Grantaire jumps. Montparnasse has fucking materialized from a doorway, dressed in tight black jeans, a white t-shirt that’s nearly see-through, very fashionable. He’s lithe and dark-haired and very fit, with none of the gauntness usually associated with heroin addicts.

 

“I see drugs,” Grantaire says, gesturing. “Why are you keeping those around?”

 

“Don’t act so high and mighty.” Éponine winces, stands up. When she pulls off her coat Grantaire can see the low swell of her stomach, barely there,  thinks suddenly _there’s a fucking baby in there_. “It doesn’t look good on you.”

 

“What happened, anyways?” Montparnasse asks, pulling his arms over his head. He interlocks his fingers and stretches. “Why’d you bring him around, Ép?”

 

That’s not her name. Grantaire grits his teeth.

 

“Nothing’s wrong.” Éponine reaches for a cigarette packet, taps one out. Montparnasse comes over and flicks his lighter out. Grantaire watches the scene with thinly-veiled disgust.

 

“Shouldn’t you lay off the smoking?” he asks, unable to stop himself, when Éponine sucks in smoke. “With the…”

 

“That’s really none of yours, is it?” Montparnasse smiles. His teeth are unnervingly white.

 

“Maybe I should go,” Grantaire says. He half-expects Éponine to speak up, say, _no, no, you should stay_ , but she doesn’t. Fine, he thinks. If it’s going to be like that.

 

He goes out the door, and the weather is absolute shit—a storm coming in from the east, huge dark clouds, and biting wind. Grantaire gets lost twice on his way back to the Metro station. He doesn’t even feel the cold.

 

____________

 

“Heard anything from Éponine recently?” Jehan asks on Sunday, as they climb a narrow stone staircase near the Sorbonne. Jehan’s just bought some weed from a university student (reliable guy, always has got good stuff, needs to pay his tuition, you know how it goes…) and they’re headed off to go smoke it. Grantaire rolls his eyes at the question.

 

“No.”

 

“I heard that they’ve broken up.”

 

“Uh. What?”

 

“Her and Montparnasse. I heard they had a bad falling out last night.”

 

Grantaire’s heart skips a beat.

 

“Hear what it was about?”

 

“Yeah, actually.” Jehan pulls his hair into a ponytail. Lose red-blond strands fall over his collar. “Apparently Montparnasse was treating her badly, and she told him to fuck off, and he said that he was going to kick her out of the apartment. It’s anyone’s guess what that means, you know—”

 

“The apartment,” Grantaire says. “His place.”

 

“They were living together?” Jehan gapes. “I didn’t know.”

 

“Neither did I, until yesterday.” Grantaire doesn’t go into much detail, and Jehan doesn’t seem to want more than the basics. Maybe he doesn’t want to think about Éponine being pregnant, or the fact that she’s skipping classes left and right, her grades probably paralleled with Grantaire’s, or that it’s anyone’s guess where she’s sleeping tonight, or tomorrow night. Home, maybe. Grantaire wonders if her parents know about the baby.

 

“Montparnasse is a dick, but he’ll get his own.” Jehan leads Grantaire into a stretch of alleyway. Behind a couple of café dumpsters they roll joints and light up, watching for passing police.

 

They smoke quietly and furtively, and a busboy who takes the garbage out to the dumpsters doesn’t look twice at them.

 

After a while, Jehan says,

 

“So, how are things with…?”

 

Grantaire’s not stupid. He kicks at the ground, booting an empty soda can across the alleyway.

 

“Fine. Alright.”

 

“I’m not asking to be nosy. Well, I’m kind of asking to be nosy. I’m just curious.”

 

“It’s like. We.” Grantaire pauses, suddenly a little embarrassed. Should he even be talking about this with Jehan? It’s definitely not illegal, because he’s of age and they’re both consenting adults—but is it, like, morally illegal? “We kind of see each other when we can. I won’t call it hooking up because that feels. Wrong. Somehow. I don’t know.”

 

“I understand,” Jehan says, although Grantaire’s not sure that he does. Jehan sees the beauty in things, the purity, even in ugliness. He wouldn’t see the shame in hooking up. Maybe he wouldn’t understand the wrongness that Grantaire feels, the way that sometimes he wakes up in his own bed, alone, and nearly cries because he’s so purely lonely.

 

Maybe Jehan would understand.

 

Fuck it. Grantaire exhales smoke. He’s way too high for this shit.

 

____________

 

On Sunday evening, Grantaire takes the train to Enjolras’ place. Mostly, he just wants to shirk all responsibility for an evening, and do something that doesn’t involve smoking with Jehan or drinking in an unfamiliar apartment.

 

Enjolras is busy grading papers, and they share a comfortable silence. Grantaire makes powdered lemonade and drinks it, sitting on Enjolras’ couch with his head on Enjolras’ shoulder. He falls asleep and wakes to his cell phone ringing.

 

“Hello?”

 

“Grantaire? You need to get over here now.”

 

“Combeferre?” Grantaire sits bolt upright, bleary. Combeferre’s voice is strained, high. “What’s wrong?” He can hear sounds in the background: voices, maybe. Chaos.

 

Enjolras is sitting at the table, bent over his papers. A single light is on. A woolen blanket slides from Grantaire’s lap to the floor; Enjolras had covered him up when he’d fallen asleep.

 

“Fuck, man,” Combeferre says, and Grantaire can heard the sharp edge of tears in his voice. “It’s Éponine—it’s the baby.”

 

____________

 

It’s two trains and a sprint up the darkened street, but Grantaire makes it to Éponine’s place at midnight.

 

Combeferre comes to the door with his sleeves rolled up. He lets Grantaire in, stepping back silently. All the lights are burning in the front room, and panic lingers like electricity.

 

“Where are the kids?” Grantaire asks, because the flat is suspiciously silent.

 

“Out. A neighbor’s place, I think. Family friend. Nearby.” Combeferre chews on his lower lip. “I made them leave.”

 

“There’s blood on your hands.” Grantaire is staring. “Ferre, there’s blood on your…”

 

Combeferre looks down. His hands are trembling. There’s blood on them, dry, dark. He looks up.

 

Then he breaks down. Grantaire puts his arms around Combeferre’s shoulders and Combeferre is crying silently, so hard he’s shaking. When he pulls away his eyes are red. He swipes at them and looks down.

 

“Where is she?” Grantaire asks.

 

“Asleep. After the medics left I carried her into the bedroom.”

 

“Medics?”

 

Combeferre looks up, meeting Grantaire’s gaze. His eyes are blank.

 

He says, “there was barely anything there.”

 

____________

 

While Combeferre washes his hands, Grantaire goes into Éponine’s bedroom. She’s sprawled on the bed, under a thin blanket, eyes closed, lips parted.

 

Grantaire can barely stand to look at her sleeping like that. She looks so young.

 

He returns to the kitchen and Combeferre is at the sink, water turned on, steam rising in tendrils.

 

“What are you doing?” Grantaire steps closer, feels a jolt of horror as he sees Combeferre’s hands, scalded red, fingers raw. Combeferre looks up and his eyes are wide and glassy.

 

“The paramedics came, but there was hardly anything there.” He swallows, lifts his hands. “I mean it, Grantaire. Hardly anything.”

 

Grantaire’s breath sticks in his throat. He wants to say something—anything—that will erase the horror of the situation, but of course he can’t, nothing can, not at this point, everything’s progressed too far already. He can’t imagine what Éponine and Combeferre have been through tonight; the images that flash behind his eyelids make him feel nauseated.

 

They sit at the kitchen table for a long time. Grantaire wonders where the Thénardier parents are. Monsieur Thénardier is doubtless finishing out a sentence at the men’s prison—it’s really anyone’s guess as to where Mme Thénarider spends her weeknights. Grantaire imagines the other kids—Azelma and Gavroche and their big worried sad eyes—holed up in a neighbor’s shitty flat. Do they even understand what’s happened?

 

It’s a long night, full of silence. Every exhale is a razor in the cold air. Rap music drifts in the air, all the notes are thick and heavy. Grantaire doesn’t discern lyrics. They stay awake all night, sitting at the table. They talk sporadically, but any conversation soon dwindles. The gravity of the situation becomes more than palpable.

 

As pallid dawn breaks, Grantaire falls into a restless sleep. He wakes later, hazy-minded and feeling sick, to the sound of footsteps.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

Éponine is in the doorway, wearing underwear and a men’s shirt. Grantaire knows without looking that it belongs to Montparnasse.

 

“We’ve been here all night.” Combeferre is at the sink, rinsing out a coffee cup. “Do you want tea? You should sit down.”

 

“I’m not broken,” Éponine says, but the words come out brittle. Her face is pale, drawn. “I’m going back to bed.”

 

“Okay,” Combeferre says softly. They both watch her turn and disappear into her bedroom, shut the door.

 

“I should go,” Grantaire says, because he feels like he’s going to either throw up or break down if he’s here for another five minutes. As he goes out the door he hears the distinct sound of crying—broken, broken crying—from Éponine’s bedroom.

 

_____________

  
  


Grantaire goes home and sleeps for ten hours straight, waking up with stiff shoulders and a buzzing head. He’s hungry, feels starved for something more than food. His mother is home. She’s doing dishes and seems surprised to see Grantaire when he makes his way to the kitchen.

 

“I never see you in the mornings,” she says.

 

Grantaire pours cereal into a bowl. “I’m always out late. You know that.”

 

“Never studying.” She looks at him, and she looks exhausted. Suddenly, she says, “do you remember going to church?”

 

His fingers still on the refrigerator door. Grantaire shrugs. “A long time ago.”

 

“You sang with the children’s choir. You sang so beautifully.”

 

He upends milk over the cereal bowl. “I don’t remember it that well. I must’ve been, like, eight. Nine.”

 

“Something like that.”

 

What neither of them say is that by the time Grantaire was ten he’d skipped more Sunday school lessons than attended them, and his father was drinking more and more, and showing up to church with a black eye was out of the book, and by age eleven Grantaire was spending his Sundays stealing from corner stores and sneaking beer in the alleyway behind the apartment complex.

 

“When you were younger,” his mother says, and then pauses. “When you were younger, I thought you might have made a priest.”

 

Grantaire barely resists a loud and brutal laugh. Imagines himself in black, a stiff white collar. Kneeling before an altar.

 

“In another world, maybe. This one’s too strangely made.”

 

His mother looks at him sideways. She doesn’t say anything. Her silence follows Grantaire back to his bedroom, through the window the fire escape, where he lights a cigarette and smokes it in thoughtful solitude.

 

________________

 

Days spiral into weeks, and the winter holidays are coming up quickly. Grantaire endeavors to spend as much time as possible with Enjolras, but Enjolras is distant.

 

“I have a final exam to write, and a backlog of ungraded papers up to the goddamn moon,” he says when Grantaire comes to his classroom after school. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

 

“I’ll walk home with you,” Grantaire offers. “Keep you company.”

 

“Grantaire.” Enjolras puts down his pen. “Go be with your friends.”

 

But Grantaire’s friends, too, are distant. Jehan spends every waking moment in the library, an unusual divergent from his typical study habits, and Courfeyrac is spending a suspicious amount of time with Bahorel (definitely not studying).

 

“Call me. Or text me. You know, if you change your mind.” He shrugs on his jacket. Enjolras returns to his grading.

 

“I won’t, but I appreciate the offer.”

 

Grantaire stands there for another moment, waiting for Enjolras to say something else, something validating. He hates himself for that. For wanting—needing—validation. When Enjolras is silent, Grantaire lets himself out of the classroom.

 

____________

 

The wind pushes him up Combeferre’s street. It’s getting late—nearly seven o’clock—and darkness has fallen fast. It’s cold and Grantaire is miserable, and hasn’t even called Combeferre to make sure that Combeferre’s home, but where else would he be? Certainly not out getting drunk or high or fucked, that’s for sure. Combeferre is a sturdiness, a rock. The phrase harbor in a storm comes to mind.

 

He knocks on Combeferre’s door, and there is a moment of silence before it’s answered. Combeferre is in a state of undress, wearing boxers and a white t-shirt, and his hair is sticking up like he’s been asleep.

 

“Can I come in?” Grantaire says, because Combeferre doesn’t step back to let him in.

 

“One second,” Combeferre says, and closes the door halfway before speaking over his shoulder to someone inside the apartment. A door opens, closes. As Grantaire is wondering what the hell is going on, a girl materializes in the front door, wearing underwear and one of Combeferre’s shirts.

 

“Holy shit,” Grantaire says, without meaning to.

 

Éponine regards him coolly. “I’m going to put pants on,” she says, and vanishes into Combeferre’s bedroom.

 

“Uh.” Grantaire tries not to gape. “How long has this been going on?”

 

Combeferre steps outside and closes the door. The hall is cold. “A few weeks, if you must know.”

 

“Yeah, I must know.” Grantaire rakes his hands through his hair. “Shit, my best friend is fucking my _other_ best friend—she’s like my _sister_ , man—and nobody thinks to mention it to me?”

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

“Say what?”

 

“Fucking. It sounds—it’s too rough.”

 

“Uh.” Grantaire lets out a drawn-out sigh. “Okay. Does _sleeping with_ sound better?”

 

“A little. And this isn’t about you. No offense.”

 

“None taken,” Grantaire lies. He is offended—how could he not be? The idea is almost absurd, but, simultaneously, horrifyingly plausible—this kind of thing happened between friends, didn’t it? Yeah, it did. Grantaire remembers having a wicked crush on Combeferre, wanting to kiss him, wanting to go further, do other things, wake up in Combeferre’s bed in a more-than-friends way.

 

“Are you okay?” Combeferre asks. Grantaire becomes aware that he’s breathing heavily.

 

“When did this all start?”

 

“Do you really want to know?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“After the—after the thing with the baby. She needed someone who was going to be there for her. She felt like no one else was.”

 

Grantaire opens his mouth to say I was, I was there, but knows at once, suddenly and violently, that it’s a lie. He’d been distracted, chasing down Enjolras, spending evenings at Enjolras’ place, hoping that they might venture further than fervent kissing or a hurried handjob; neglecting his studies unless it was drawing for Art, and even then all of his sketches seemed to turn into curly-haired high-cheekboned young men.

 

Éponine opens the door. She’s wearing sweatpants, her own. Her hair is unbrushed.

 

“I haven’t seen you in weeks,” she says. There’s nothing specifically accusatory about the way she says it, but Éponine’s words strike Grantaire’s chest like a well-aimed punch.

 

“I’ve been busy,” he says, dimly, aware that it’s a shit excuse. Éponine comes and puts her arms around Combeferre. He slings an arm around her shoulder, playing with her hair. Grantaire, watching them, feels a little sick. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be sorry,” Éponine says. “You want some tea?”

 

“Yeah, come in.” Combeferre opens the door again. Grantaire steps inside. He’s thinking about Enjolras and about ungraded papers and about rainstorms and snowstorms and suddenly he feels very terrible about everything. Suddenly, he feels like he’s drowning all over again.

  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo! 
> 
> This chapter is about two weeks in the making now! I was out of town in New York City for six days, and had pretty shifty internet access. But I did see Les Mis on Broadway—if you're able to I would urge you to see it. It was amazing, and my first time seeing Les Mis as a production. Anyways, I hope that you enjoy this chapter!

“Hello?” Grantaire mumbles, groggy, into the phone line. “Who’s this?”

 

“It’s me.” Background noise hisses. Grantaire rolls onto his back, looks at his clock. A few minutes past six. “Enjolras.”

 

“What’s wrong?” Because something must be, if Enjolras is calling this early.

 

“I’m at the train station. I’m going south for a few days. It’s a family thing, family emergency.”

 

“Is everything okay?” Grantaire’s mouth tastes ashen. He sits up. “Are you okay?”

 

“Something with—yeah. I’m fine. Just wanted to let you know. Texting seemed...too impersonal.”

 

“Right.”

 

“I’ll be home in a few days. Great way to start off the winter holidays, right?”

 

“No kidding.” Grantaire is about to hang up. Then, “Enjolras?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’m glad that you didn’t just text.”

 

A soft huff as Enjolras laughs. “See you, R.”

 

Grantaire nearly says something down the phone line, something he knows he’ll regret, so bites his tongue.

 

“See you.”

 

They hang up. Grantaire is on his back for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, not really moving, not really thinking about anything. After a while he falls into an uneasy sleep, dreams full of foggy early-morning train stations and snowstorms and golden, golden halos.

 

___________

 

It’s Saturday, so there’s a party somewhere, and Grantaire is determined to find it.

 

His mother is working late, and his father’s picking up the night shift all this week, so at eight o’clock Grantaire puts on two jackets and a scarf and takes some money from the drawer in the front room where his mother hides it (badly) and he locks up the flat and goes down to the train station.

 

Bahorel has sent him a series of texts regarding a party at a “really chill place” near the Sorbonne, which Grantaire thinks will probably be fucking great because those are the kind of student parties that involve rich kids and really good weed and a fucking ton of other drugs. Any drug, really.

 

It’s a brief train ride, and then a cold windy walk to an unfamiliar flat. It’s ground floor, and there are people outdoors despite the frigid air. They’re dancing. Loud music throbs through the doorway. Grantaire threads his way through a tangle of dancing, drinking bodies, finds Bahorel doing shots with a couple of girls.

 

“Hey,” Grantaire says.

 

“Heyyyyy,” Bahorel drains his shot glass. He shakes his head and hooks an arm around one of the girls. She’s short and is wearing a push-up bra. “How’ve you been, man?”

 

“Fine.” Grantaire takes some beer from a plastic card table. “Great.”

 

“This is the best fucking holiday, you know that?” Bahorel is laughing. “It’s like, sometimes it’s cold, but it doesn’t matter because everyone’s so fucking happy! Like, it’s almost Christmas, too!”

 

“You’re Jewish,” Grantaire points out, tilting the beer down his throat. It’s tepid and not nearly sufficient for quick drunkenness. “Right?”

 

“So?” Bahorel grins. One of the girls laughs. The other has vanished into the crowd. “I still appreciate the Christmas spirit.”

 

“Knowing you,” Grantaire mutters, and returns to the card table.

 

“How are things going with…?” Bahorel winks salaciously. Grantaire upends a bottle of vodka over a cup. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, either.”

 

“If Jehan told you I’m going to—”

 

“Relax. Prouvaire wouldn’t let something like that slip.”

 

“Then who told you?” Grantaire drinks. The vodka is lukewarm, but it tastes cold and clinical.

 

“Uh, you, actually.” Bahorel is grinning again. “Like, a month ago. You got so wasted you could barely stand and when I was literally pulling you into the Metro you started talking.”

 

Grantaire swallows his disappointment in another mouthful of drink. He hates that he’s a talkative drunk, that he doesn’t know when to keep his fucking mouth shut.

 

“You want to go outside?” Bahorel doesn’t wait for Grantaire to respond, practically hauls him through the front door. In the small, dingy courtyard a group of teenagers are lighting up joints. “Tell me everything.”

 

“Can we not talk about this?” Grantaire is already miserable. “It feels kind of weird. I have to separate…”

 

“I understand,” Bahorel says. “It’s two different parts of your life. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

 

“I don’t,” Grantaire says, too quickly. “Thanks for. You know. Getting it.”

 

Bahorel is quiet for a moment. Then he says, “I’ve been there. In your position.”

 

“What?”

 

“There was this supply teacher. This, uh, this guy. Very smart and clean-cut and our regular teacher was out having a baby, and I was such shit at maths, I needed all the help I could get. And he offered to let me stay after school and then, you know, one thing leads to another and that sounds stupid but one minute you’re memorizing quadratics and the next you’re sucking a dick…”

 

Grantaire almost chokes. “Are you serious?”

 

Bahorel is smiling sideways, delivering every line with a kind of dry humor, but there’s something unfunny about his gaze. “This was before I dropped out, obviously. I was fifteen.”

 

He laughs sourly, shakes his head. “The past is the past right? Live and—whatever.”

 

“Let die,” Grantaire murmurs. Suddenly, his throat burns. He pictures fifteen year-old Bahorel, confused and turned-on and hopelessly hot for a sharp, intelligent young teacher. “Live and let die.”

 

________________

 

Running into Éponine is not a mistake or coincidence. In the Thénardier’s world there are no mistakes, and there are no coincidences. Everything is calculated.

 

He’s waiting for the Metro, the line that will take him to Jehan’s neighborhood, when someone slips up, dark and quiet. A shadow.

 

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”

 

Grantaire jumps a little. “Shit, ‘Ponine. You scared me.”

 

“Visiting Monsieur Enjolras today?” She’s wearing a black sweatshirt and jeans. Her face is clear, eyes sharp and bright. Grantaire cuffs her shoulder lightly.

 

“No. Jehan.”

 

“I’m shocked that you’re not too busy pining after our Political Science teacher to visit,” Éponine’s lips twist into an affable smirk.

 

“I’m surprised that you’re not too busy fucking my friend,” Grantaire snipes, unable to stop himself. Surprisingly, Éponine only laughs.

 

“That boy does things with his tongue that you wouldn’t believe.”

 

Grantaire chokes out laughter. He realizes that once, he might have been jealous, but there’s no sharp pang in his chest and he feels only the luminescence of happiness.

 

“I’m glad that you’re okay,” he says, and means it. “You know, with…”

 

“Well, I’m not seeing him anymore.” Éponine tilts her chin up. “And I’m not drinking, either. I’m through with it. With all that.”

 

Grantaire’s happiness is gone in a flash. His chest tightens. Shit, he’s a miserable fucking bastard, he should be over the moon that she’s done with drinking, he should fucking kissing the ground that she’s still alive after the baby, after the drugs, after all the shit that should’ve knocked them down and out but they’re both still here, and it hurts wildly and irrationally because Grantaire doesn’t have the strength to stop drinking. Or snorting coke or smoking or doing crazy stupid things.

 

“Good.” God, does his voice really sound that fucking empty? “Good, good for you. That’s the—the best thing—isn’t it?”

 

Éponine turns her head away, like she senses the sudden tension. “I guess.” Then, “I have to go. I’ll see you around.” She pauses. “I’m glad that everything’s going well for you.”

 

As she walks away, Grantaire’s breath catches in his throat. He nearly calls after her, is overwhelmed by the urge to say: you’re my best friend, you know that, don’t you? but he doesn’t, and hates himself for it.

 

The train comes into the station, clattering loud on the track. Grantaire hurries down the stairs, into the mouth of the Metro, he and Éponine going their separate ways.

 

________________

 

Three days pass before Enjolras returns, in the middle of a snowstorm. Grantaire puts on a jacket and overcoat and hat and scarf and gloves and braves the wind to meet Enjolras at the train station. Inside it’s bright and hot, the kind of heat that rises from crowds. Grantaire takes off his scarf and hat and gloves and overcoat, rolls them up and crams them into his backpack. He lingers by some electronic timetables and waits for Enjolras’ train to arrive.

 

When it does—Provence flickering up on the board beside him—Grantaire goes and stands next to the track. The doors open, mechanical hisses, and people in dark jackets step out. Some push past Grantaire. He shoulders his way through the crowd until he sees Enjolras; they rush to meet each other, hug tightly. Grantaire leans in to kiss Enjolras but Enjolras steps away, swiftly and deftly.

 

“We can’t,” he says under his breath as they begin to walk. He’s carrying a duffel bag that seems mostly empty. “You understand why, right?”

 

“Course,” Grantaire mutters, although he doesn’t, not really. What are the chances of someone from school seeing them here? Paris is a huge city. “How was...seeing your family?”

 

Enjolras looks straight ahead. His lips are pressed together as they exit the station, a thin, unreadable line. Grantaire has to stop and fish around in his backpack for his coat and scarf. Enjolras shifts from one foot to the other, like he’s fighting the urge to run fast and far. It’s unnerving. Grantaire’s never seen Enjolras like this, full of nervous energy.

 

“It was horrible,” he says finally. “My cousin. I was there to. See him.”

 

“Was everything okay?”

 

“No.” Enjolras laughs bleakly. “No. He tried to kill himself.”

 

Grantaire forgets to breathe for a moment. “God.”

 

Enjolras begins to walk again as soon as Grantaire is ready. It’s like he needs to move, and quickly, to move and forget.

 

“He swallowed all these pills, you know. That’s how he wanted to—anyways, they found him in time. His roommate, I guess. Called an ambulance, the medics came in time, so.”

 

“I’m so sorry, Enjolras,” Grantaire says, the name a relief on his tongue. It’s a long walk from the station to Enjolras’ place, and the snow flurries around them and after a few blocks Grantaire can’t feel his lips, but he goes anyways.

 

Enjolras is uncharacteristically silent until they’re in his flat, and then he turns and pressed himself against Grantaire with a sudden, quiet urgency, kissing him until the feeling’s returned to Grantaire’s lips and then some.

 

He’s never known Enjolras like this—every motion is quick and hot with desperation. Enjolras ends up on his knees in front of Grantaire, and Grantaire with his hands tangled in Enjolras’ hair, moaning, head tilted back, brought to the edge almost delirious with pleasure. Then he touches Enjolras, jerking him off until Enjolras grits out, “I can’t hold on anymore” and comes hard into Grantaire’s hand. Grantaire feels Enjolras fall against him, moaning wordlessly against his neck, and he feels something warm and unfamiliar in his chest; something that isn’t shame and isn’t arousal.

 

Afterwards, when they’re laying on Enjolras’ unmade bed with the heater ticking in the corner, Enjolras says, suddenly,

 

“He was gay, you know.”

 

It’s the first time Grantaire has heard Enjolras use the word. It feels too serious, too condemning. The room is full of gray light.

 

“My cousin. He was—he was gay, and he used to be bullied for it. Mercilessly. You know how horrible kids can be. They beat him up. After school. I’d see him come over to our place with a cut lip, a black eye, and his father never explained. There was never any discussion as to why this was happening, it was just. It just was.” Enjolras is staring at the ceiling, gaze distant. “I never even considered why until I was about twelve, thirteen. Kids called him faggot on the street, threw rocks at him. He must have been about fifteen then. But it wasn’t something that we ever talked about. Families like mine don’t have gay sons.”

 

There’s a hard bitterness to Enjolras’ voice.

 

“He went to England for a few years, after graduation. They thought he’d be a lawyer, but he never was—he moved to Berlin. I was seventeen by that time, I already knew what I was. I just.” He laughs humorlessly. “I never said anything. I figured that anything I let slip would get back to my parents.”

 

Grantaire doesn’t know what to say. He puts his head on Enjolras’ chest.

 

“So I get this call early in the morning, he’s tried to commit suicide. They took him to the hospital but he was under psychiatric observance. We couldn’t talk to him. They wouldn’t let us, they said that it would make him crazier—they said that, crazier. But he was fine in the end, I guess. Went home. Said it was all an accident, he’d never do something so horrible and stupid again.”

 

Then Enjolras is silent. Grantaire is struck by the sudden closeness of this, an experience both enthralling and frightening, because he’s never felt so close to another person.

 

“It made me think,” Enjolras says, and Grantaire feels the vibration of Enjolras’ voice in his jaw. “About the people I know. The people I care about.”

 

Grantaire’s fingers clench, though he’s not aware of doing so.

 

He means to say I’ll never do that, I swear I won’t, but the words stick in his mouth. He thinks about pills, and about the tile of bathroom floors, and about the human capacity for emotion and how much it frightens him.

 

“Never,” Grantaire murmurs. Desperation comes in waves like a sea. “I’ll never leave.”

 

He doesn’t say you.

 

He can hear Enjolras’ heartbeat like a drum against his ear.

  
  


_________________

 

“Yo, R.” Bahorel slings an arm around Grantaire’s shoulder. They’ve met up at a disco, which Grantaire really doesn’t want to be at. He’s only there at Éponine’s behest. She dragged Combeferre along, but he’s looking politely tortured on the dancefloor so Grantaire’s fled to a luridly-lit hallway. “This is Mickey.”

 

Mickey is short and scrawny, with hair cut short at the sides. He’s wearing skinny jeans and a sleeveless shirt despite the wintry chill outside. He has knuckle tattoos.

 

“Mickey’s a friend,” Bahorel says, and Grantaire thinks that everyone Bahorel meets is a friend.

 

“Mickey’s a funny name,” Grantaire says before he can stop himself. “Are you English?”

 

“Liverpool,” Mickey says, in unaccented French.

 

“You speak really well. I can’t tell.”

 

“I grew up here.” Mickey tosses his head. He moves like he knows how to fight. “My dad’s French. Mum’s English.”

 

Grantaire doesn’t know what to say, so he nods.

 

“Well, I’m gonna get another drink,” Bahorel says brightly, and vanished into the crowd. Grantaire, left alone with Mickey-from-France-and-Liverpool, settles for nodding and looking around room, careful to avoid eye contact with everyone.

 

“Want to go outside?” Mickey nods over his shoulder.

 

“Alright,” Grantaire says gamely, follows the shorter boy onto a concrete stoop. Mickey lights a cigarette.

 

“Bahorel, eh?”

 

“Yeah.” Grantaire laughs, because it all seems to be in good humor.

 

“Funny guy.”

 

“He really is.”

 

Mickey sort of snorts, looks sideways at a group of passing girls. They can’t be older than fifteen or sixteen, dressed skimpily, hanging off of each other’s shoulders and laughing.

 

“Shit, look at her tits,” Mickey says, not bothering to keep his voice down. He gestures to a short girl with curly hair and a tube shirt on.

 

“She’s a kid, man,” Grantaire mutters. Mickey laughs around the cigarette, offer Grantaire one.

 

“You’re not into younger girls?”

 

Grantaire pulls his eyebrows into what he hopes is a disapproving scowl. “Not really my thing.”

 

Then they make eye contact—Mickey’s gaze drilling hard into his own—for a brief horrifying moment Grantaire thinks he knows, but then Mickey shrugs and looks away.

 

“Well, I’d fuck her.”

 

Grantaire doesn’t say anything else, and smoking in silence distracts them until Bahorel returns.

 

Bahorel is intent on getting thoroughly wasted, but Grantaire isn’t really feeling it. He ends up putting his jacket on and saying his goodbyes—Mickey is still outside leering at teenage girls—and walks until his feet are aching and he can smell the river.

 

Enjolras is awake. There’s a light on in his window.

 

Grantaire doesn’t call, but he climbs the stairs until he’s outside Enjolras’ door. Then he knocks three times.

 

Enjolras answers the door in a t-shirt and jeans. There’s music playing, the sound of conversation. When he sees Grantaire his eyebrows go up.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Hey.” Grantaire cranes his neck, trying to look inside Enjolras’ apartment. He can see a couple of guys and girls drinking, sitting around the low table.

 

“I didn’t think you…”

 

“No, I wasn’t planning to—I just—should I come back? Is this…?”

 

“It’s not a great time,” Enjolras says. Then he shakes his head. “Shit, that was rude.”

 

“It’s fine. I get it.” Grantaire huffs out a laugh.

 

“It’s kind of a…” Enjolras pauses too long. Grantaire hears the words adult thing hang between them, unspoken.

 

“Yeah.” He forces a smile. “See you.”

 

He’s taken two steps when Enjolras says, “wait,” hurries out into the hallway. Kisses Grantaire quickly, hard, on the lips.

 

“Come by tomorrow.”

 

Grantaire walks home cold and exhausted, smiling ear to ear.

  
  


____________

 

He spends the next morning at the Thénardier place.

 

Éponine laughs when she opens the door and sees Grantaire standing there smiling like a dope, holding a bouquet of flowers.

 

“Are these stolen?”

 

He smiles sideways. “Maybe.”

 

“You know that I love a five-finger discount.” She looks at the ground for a moment, like she’s deciding what to do. Then she lunges forward and hugs him so hard his ribs hurt.

 

The Thénardier kids are in the kitchen, making pancakes. Combeferre is standing in front of the range in a frilly pink apron, pouring batter into a skillet.

 

“No fucking way,” Grantaire says, and then, “Sorry, sorry,” when Combeferre says not in front of the kids, God, R, but he goes and hugs him, too, and Combeferre’s sisters are there and suddenly it feels like a family.

 

Grantaire ends up staying for three hours, helping Combeferre do the dishes, and he draws line art in black marker—castles and dogs and spaceships—to make “coloring book pages” for the younger Thénardiers. When he leaves it’s snowing lightly. Azelma makes him promise to come back on Sunday, so they can make more pancakes.

 

He does. What else do you say to a kid? You don’t break promises, either, so Grantaire knows that he’ll be back Sunday morning, regardless of how brutal a hangover he’s nursing.

 

It’s home to an empty apartment, and Grantaire finds a note that says buy groceries with a handful of money beneath it. He pockets the change, walks down the street to the grocery store.

 

He’s coming home with two plastic bags, passing a pub when someone shouts,

 

“There he is. That’s the one I told you about.”

 

Grantaire turns. Mickey is jogging towards him, followed by three boys in jackets. Grantaire doesn’t recognize them.

 

“The hell do you want?” The skin on the back of his neck prickles. Fear. An animal sense, something old and true.

 

“You’re right, Mickey.” A dark-haired boy says, drawing to a halt. “He does look faggy.”

 

“Get the fuck away from me.” Grantaire’s throat feels tight.

 

“Or what? You’ll fuck me up the ass?” Mickey sneers. “You fucking queen.”

 

Grantaire drops the plastic bags. “The fuck did you just call me?”

 

Mickey pulls his lips back. “Your majesty.”

 

In a swift and unforgiving movement, Grantaire headbutts him.

 

It hurts like hell, but Mickey screams and stumbles, holding his nose, and one of his cronies swings and hits Grantaire hard in the mouth. He tastes blood, hits back, gets punched, nearly goes down, comes up swinging, someone kicks him—he’s on his back—boots colliding with his stomach, ribs, back, he’s on his feet, swinging again, feels the kind of punch that leaves a black eye—

 

When they scatter, Grantaire’s kneeling on the wet pavement, holding his mouth. The iron taste of blood is sudden and violent on his tongue.

 

He gets up, groceries abandoned, starts walking. He doesn’t get on a train, worried that someone might call the police.

 

By the time he climbs the narrow stairs to Enjolras’ place he’s shaking. Knocks on the door with a bloody fist. Enjolras answers, gapes, pulls Grantaire inside.

 

“Holy fuck, what happened?”

 

Grantaire winces as Enjolras’ fingers skim his cheek. “You should see the other guys.”

 

“Who did this to you?” Enjolras is rushing to the fridge, pulling out a packet of frozen peas. “Was it your father?”

 

“No. Some guy I—someone I don’t know. And his friends. Three, I think.”

 

“God.” Enjolras eases Grantaire onto the couch. “Are you okay?”

 

“I don’t know,” Grantaire says. “Yeah, I am,” but then he starts to cry, hard, without meaning to, and he’s hot-faced with shame as Enjolras removes his shirt and there are wicked bruises on his sides from being kicked and he’s holding the frozen peas against his cheek and his mouth still tastes like blood.

 

Enjolras strokes Grantaire’s hair and whispers things to him, things that Grantaire doesn’t make sense of.

 

He puts his head on Enjolras’ shoulder and lets himself cry.

 

______________

 

It is Saturday night when Bahorel shows up at Grantaire’s place, breathless, forehead shining with sweat.

 

“I ran from the train,” he says, rubbing his face with the palms of his hands. “I wanted to let you know that I just beat the everloving shit out of Mickey.”

 

“Didn’t have to do that.”

 

“Yeah, I did.” Bahorel says. Then he won’t look at Grantaire for too long, and Grantaire’s mother is clattering dishes around inside and cursing. “What did you tell your parents?”

 

“That some kid looked at me the wrong way.”

 

“They believe you?”

 

Grantaire snorts. “My dad clapped me on the back and said good on you. Maman said that that’s a path headed for prison.”

 

“Right.” Bahorel murmurs. “I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

 

“Don’t be.” Grantaire’s thinking about the way that Enjolras held him, hands on his hair, whispering close to his ear. “Don’t be.”

 

_____________

 

Then it’s Sunday night, and Grantaire goes over to Enjolras’ place.

 

His eye is still blacked, ribs bruised. Smiling hurts. Breathing hurts, laughing hurts.

 

“You look awful,” Enjolras says when Grantaire comes in. “Really awful.”

 

“Thanks,” Grantaire mutters, and drops onto the couch. “Appreciate it.”

 

Enjolras is quiet for a moment, organizing papers at the wooden table. Then he says,

 

“Have you given any thought to next year?”

 

“What?”

 

“University.”

 

“Oh.” Grantaire shrugs. “Yeah, I’m not going. I need to start working. Uni is expensive. And bullshit, unless you’re going to be a doctor or something.”

 

Enjolras looks up. “There are scholarships. Opportunities for students with lower income.”

 

“I’m not a charity case,” Grantaire grits out.

 

“That’s not what I—”

 

“I know. I just don’t see the point.”

 

“But if you could go, what would you study?”

 

Grantaire thinks for a moment. “Art.”

 

“Art.”

 

“I know it’s a stupid thing to study. Useless, really. Unless you’re, like, Monet or Van Gogh or—those guys who never made any money while they were alive. Which still makes it useless.”

 

“It isn’t useless if you love it.”

 

“And what—you love being a teacher?”

 

Enjolras’ head jerks up. “Yeah,” he says, and suddenly his voice is hard. “Yeah, I do.”

 

Grantaire is silent. He knows when a nerve’s been touched, when he’s crossed a line.

 

“I—”

 

But Enjolras’ phone rings. Enjolras snaps it open.

 

“Hello?” He listens for a moment. Grantaire sees the color drain from his face, his lips press into a hard, flat line. He nods. “Y-yeah. Yeah. Love—love you.”

 

He hangs up.

 

“What was that?” Grantaire asks, but part of him already knows, already reads the shock welling in Enjolras’ ocean eyes. Drowning eyes.

 

“My father,” Enjolras murmurs, and his gaze is a thousand miles away. “My father is dead.”

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey everyone! i know that this chapter took about a thousand years to publish—i've been ridiculously busy with schoolwork, preparing for AP tests, and figuring out college stuff. i hope that you enjoy this chapter!!!

Grantaire stays through the night, his arms around Enjolras. 

Enjolras doesn't cry; not at first. Then, in the middle of the night—one o'clock? Two?—Grantaire wakes to Enjolras trembling, crying closed-mouthed, his tears on Grantaire's t-shirt. 

"God," Grantaire says, because he doesn't know what else to say. "I'm sorry, Enjolras, I'm sorry."

Enjolras exhales. "I shouldn't even be...he was really awful to me, you know."

"Well, I didn't ever..."

"I know," Enjolras says. "God, I know. You're lucky you didn't know him. He would have—"

Grantaire doesn't say  _would have what_ because he already knows how that sentence ends. 

 _He would have hated you_.

_______________

Morning comes, and Enjolras is up at dawn, throwing clothes into a duffel bag. He dresses in black, brings a suit. Grantaire watches from the bed, feeling a little sickened. 

"I'll be gone for a couple of days." Enjolras comes over, leans down and kisses Grantaire on the lips. He tastes like mints. "Don't flunk out of my class while I'm away."

Grantaire manages a weak laugh as Enjolras slings the duffel bag over his shoulder, heads for the door. 

"Wait." Enjolras pauses in the doorway. "There's a key on the table. Lock up when you leave, will you?"

"Yeah." 

"Thank you."

They stare at each other for a moment. 

"I—" 

"I have to catch the train," Enjolras says quickly. "I'll call you when I'm back."

Grantaire stares at the door for a long time after Enjolras has left. Suddenly, the apartment feels huge and unfriendly; too cold, too stark. Grantaire wanders around a little, feeling weird. He doesn't like being in Enjolras' place alone, realizes that he's never been here without Enjolras. 

There's a stack of photographs on the table, Poloroid snapshots. Grantaire picks one up, looks at it. He realizes with a jolt that these are photographs of Enjolras as a kid—a young teenager, probably fourteen or fifteen. His hair is shorn awkwardly, mouth pulled into a grimace. He's wearing a jacket with a patch; a school uniform. 

Grantaire can't look away. He feels guilty, sifting through Enjolras' private pictures like this. He's certainly not entitled to. 

There are faded photographs of Enjolras as a kid, then a teenager. In one he's standing with his arm around a dark-haired boy, both of them wearing band t-shirts (American bands, Grantaire notes with a wry smile—punk groups) and torn denim jackets. In another Enjolras wears a suit and tie, lanky and awkward, probably sixteen, seventeen. Maybe at a wedding. There's a big house behind him; brick and ivy. 

Then the university years. Grantaire flips through photographs of Enjolras in a dormitory room. A joint between his lips. Other kids sitting around, smoking. Enjolras with his arm around another boy, unfamiliar, with curly dark hair and a broad grin. They're on a street—Paris, Grantaire realizes. They're under the Eiffel Tower. Grey-sky background, a rainy day. They're both smiling, standing close together. Grantaire wonders briefly if they'd been fucking—not dating, Enjolras wouldn't have, not then. The thought makes him feel tight-chested and strange.

The curly-haired boy's face comes up in other photographs. He and Enjolras standing on a windy beach, white cliffs in the background. England. Grantaire recognizes the cliffs, he's seen them in textbooks, movies. In another picture they're sitting on a bed together. Grantaire wonders who took the picture.

When he gets to a family photograph—Enjolras in a dark suit, standing between a washed-out blond woman and a severe gray-haired man—he has to put them down, walk away. He can't look through Enjolras' past like that. 

Sleet is falling hard when Grantaire leaves. An old guy sits next to him on the Metro and tries to touch his thigh. 

That night, Grantaire has a vivid dream in which Enjolras leaves on a train. Grantaire is standing outside, in deep snow, snow up to his knees. He's trying to tell Enjolras something—something important—but Enjolras won't listen, maybe can't, and then Enjolras is looking away and the train is leaving. Grantaire shouts and shouts and shouts but no sound comes out. He wakes up with a raw, searing throat.

* * *

 Enjolras returns three days later, texts Grantaire from the train station.

 _I'm home_ is all he says. It's all Grantaire needs. He puts a jacket on and rides the train, jittery, feeling shitty because Enjolras is probably in a dark place right now, and all Grantaire can think about it how happy he is, how goddamn happy he is that Enjolras is home. 

"Hey." Enjolras says when he opens the door. Grantaire is in the hall, breathless, trying not to gape. Enjolras looks wan, exhausted; there are dark circles underscoring his eyes. He looks like he hasn't slept in days, or has slept badly.

"Hi." Grantaire swallows hard. Then Enjolras is taking him by the shoulders, pulling him inside. Kissing so hard it hurts. 

Enjolras' hands are quick and cold; they push under Grantaire's shirt, over his chest. Under the edge of his waistband. Grantaire, already hard, whimpers and thrusts against Enjolras' hand. In the next instant he's up against the wall with a knee between his thighs, and Enjolras is sucking hard at the skin of his neck. 

 _He's never done that before_ , Grantaire thinks hazily. It'll leave a mark, something that Enjolras is obviously keen to avoid. The thought of a bruise where Enjolras' teeth have been drive Grantaire  _crazy_. He grinds down against Enjolras' leg. 

"Fuck," he moans, when Enjolras slides a hand into the front of his jeans. "Fuck, yeah, jerk me off, fuck."

Enjolras pulls away. "Wait."

"What?" Grantaire blinks, waits as Enjolras goes into the bedroom. He presses a hand to the front of his jeans; his cock is so hard it hurts. Enjolras comes back, and Grantaire sees lube in his hands, a condom. "Uh. Are we—"

"Do you want it?"

Grantaire doesn't reply before Enjolras turns him, slams him against the wall. Grantaire arches his back, pressing into Enjolras. Enjolras yanks at his jeans; Grantaire moans. There's a moment of mad fumbling, and then Enjolras is pushing into Grantaire, and Grantaire's slack-jawed, letting himself moan like a fucking  _whore_. Enjolras breathes hot down the back of his neck.  _  
_

There's nothing slow or romantic or thoughtful; it's fast and rough and hard, which Grantaire likes, but _god he wishes he could see Enjolras' face_. Wishes he could see the look in his eyes, the part of his lips. Enjolras reaches around and jerks Grantaire off, and Grantaire is holding onto the edge, alive with white-hot pleasure, and he comes too soon, crying out. 

Enjolras comes hard, hissing  _fuck, fuck, fuck_ against Grantaire's neck. Grantaire shudders. He feels Enjolras pull out, and when he turns around Enjolras is zipping up his jeans. He throws the condom away silently.

Grantaire goes into the bathroom and cleans himself off, looks at himself in the mirror for a long time. All he can think is  _so, it finally happened_ , and the blankness of that, the absoluteness of it, makes him sick. He should be excited, content, he should be fucking laying next to Enjolras in bed, or smoking a cigarette, or something—anything. Anything but this  _blankness_.

When he returns, Enjolras is standing by the door.

"I'm sorry." He tosses Grantaire his sweatshirt. "I'm sorry. This isn't—I'm sorry."

Grantaire watches Enjolras unlock the door, hold it open. 

He wants to say  _you're kicking me out?_. Instead, he pulls the sweatshirt over his head, walks to the doorway. Gives Enjolras a brief, blank stare. He can't really think of anything else to say. 

"I'm sorry," Enjolras says again, softly.

Grantaire is already out the door. He doesn't look back.

* * *

 

"So, what happened?" Combeferre is sitting cross-legged on his bed, a textbook on his lap. He's wearing flannel pajama pants, a sweatshirt that Grantaire suspects may have belonged to him at some distant point in time.

"Uh." Grantaire picks at his shoelace. "We fucked."

Combeferre doesn't look up. "You had anal intercourse?"

"Well, you don't have to put it so _clinically_." A pause. "Yeah."

 "Use protection?"

"Yeah."

"Lubricant?"

"...yeah."

"That seems like a healthy progression. You're legal, consenting adults in a—"

"It's not that." Grantaire chews hard on his lower lip, determined to bite back any rising emotion. He's balanced on the end of Combeferre's bed, feeling stiff and miserable. "He threw me out afterwards. He said  _sorry_ and made me leave."

"Shit," Combeferre says. "Oh, fuck, R."

And then Grantaire is trying  _so fucking hard not to cry_ and failing, and he's falling into Combeferre's arms. Combeferre hugs him and Grantaire cries a little on Combeferre's shoulder, and then leans away, swiping at his nose, ashamed.

"I'm so stupid. For feeling like this. It shouldn't matter."

"But it does. To you."

"Yeah." Grantaire shakes his head. "I just don't...it shouldn't matter this much." 

Combeferre highlights a section of the textbook. He doesn't look at Grantaire, but he says,  "Maybe you should think about why it does."

* * *

 

It's almost ten when Grantaire gets home, and the apartment is cool and empty. He jumps when he turns on the light and sees his father in front of the black television screen, drinking a beer in silence.

"Where's Maman?"

"Work."

"Oh." Grantaire nods. 

"Sit down." His father gestures with the beer bottle. Grantaire sits on the edge of the battered armchair, the very edge, poised to run if necessary.

"You spend a lot of time out. With that girl—the Thénardier girl?"

"Éponine. Yeah."

"You fucking her?"

Grantaire thinks for a moment. "No." Would it be better, easier, to say yes?

"When are you gonna bring a girl home?"

"Dunno. Soon, maybe."

"All these men at work, they have sons your age. Seventeen, eighteen. Steady girlfriends. Married."

Grantaire swallows. "I'm not getting married, Papa."

"Didn't ask you to. Just wondered if you're seeing anyone. Any girl."

Later, Grantaire will hate himself for saying it. "I am, yeah."

His father's eyes widen. "You've got a girl?"

"Yeah."

"What's her name?"

Grantaire thinks fast. "Julienne." 

"She live around here?"

"Uh. No. Near the Sorbonne."

His father makes a sound of dissent, and Grantaire realizes that he assumes that she's a student, a rich kid. Why he thinks that it would even be  _plausible_ that Grantaire would date a bourgeoise university student is beyond Grantaire. He thinks about the diploma on Enjolras' living room wall.

"She's not rich. She's—she's like us. One of us." Saying it makes it feel more real. 

"What's she like, then?"

"Beautiful," Grantaire says. "Blonde, blue eyes. She's a runner. Good figure." He throws in a laugh, because that's what straight boys appreciate about girls, their bodies. "And smart." Because he knows that boys like Combeferre admire that, straight-laced boys who respect girls for their minds. "Studies politics."

His father is quiet for a moment. He drinks from the beer bottle. Then he says,

"You know, I wondered for a long time. All this running around at night, coming home late. Always out with friends. Made me wonder if you were a fag."

Grantaire swallows.

"You know. All those lady-boys taking it up the ass. They have discos, places all the faggots go and—"

"You shouldn't say that."

"What?"

"That. Word. It's—it's a slur," Grantaire says, feels his cheeks heat in a blush. "I just think it's wrong. It's like how you're not supposed to say Gypsy anymore."

His father upends the beer bottle, throws it to the carpet. Laughs. "I'll call them Gypsies if I want to, and I'll call them faggots if I want to."

Grantaire gets up. "Good talking," he says, and leaves his father alone in the dark.

* * *

 

That Wednesday, Grantaire's Art teacher catches him in the classroom doorway.

"You have a talent here," she says. She's short, gray-haired, has a strong northern accent. "A real talent. Have you thought about going to university?"

Grantaire scoffs. "You're not the first person to ask me that."

"Have you?"

"I can't afford it. Couldn't pay for a textbook. Couldn't pay for supplies—charcoal, paint, canvases. Let alone tuition."

"There are ways to pay. Loans, scholarships."

Grantaire is silent. The art room suddenly feels too big, the smell of turpentine too cloying.

"Consider it," she says. 

"I will," Grantaire promises, but as soon as he's out the door he's fighting the urge to laugh. Then a wave of sadness hits him, hard and brutal. He thinks about lying side-by-side with Enjolras, talking mindlessly about the future; they'd discussed Grantaire's going to university, but Grantaire had always been joking about it, trying to change the subject, talk about anything but  _his_ future. 

God, he misses it.

He hasn't contacted Enjolras since they'd fucked (Grantaire doesn't want to think about Enjolras holding the door open like that, forcing him out), and Enjolras hasn't texted, hasn't called. Grantaire's cut Political Science. The school office issued a warning, informed him that if he misses another three classes he'll risk failing the class, not graduating. Grantaire's not sure how much it matters anymore.

During their afternoon free period, he and Jehan sit on the back steps and roll joints. 

"How's it going with Enjolras?" Jehan asks, exhaling smoke.

"Shit. It's all shit." Grantaire almost laughs. Why? It's not funny.

"What do you mean?"

 Grantaire tells Jehan, in not so many words. He can't bring himself to be  _crude_ around Jehan, can't say  _we fucked_ because that's crass and ugly, and being around Jehan is beautiful.  


When he's finished, Jehan says,

"That's awful," very softly.

"I guess," Grantaire mutters, but suddenly his throat feels tight and warm. 

"I'm sorry. That doesn't fix anything, though. Me being sorry." Jehan exhales more smoke. "Do you ever think about pre-destination?"

Grantaire sucks on the joint. "Not beyond, like, Theology class two years ago."

"Just something I've been thinking about lately," Jehan says distantly. He watches the smoke drift up, up, into a dizzy gray sky. "Just something I've been thinking about."

* * *

 That afternoon, though, he gets a text from Enjolras.

_sorry about everything. xx_

Grantaire fumbles speed dial, pressing the phone to his ear. It rings: once, twice, three times. No answer. Grantaire leaves a message, debates calling again. Should he take the train to Enjolras' place? Would that be weird, too forward? 

 _No, fuck. He obviously_ wants  _something._

Maybe part of him knows that it's weird, pushy. But god, Grantaire is swiping his Metro card and boarding the train and he's jittery because he wants to be around Enjolras, wants to kiss him and touch him, know that he's  _real_ , that what they have is  _real_. 

There's a band of teenage girls on the stairs of the Metro, smoking and looking generally shady. 

"Blow you for a fiver," one girl says as Grantaire passes; quick, a throw-away comment. 

Grantaire shoves his hands into his pockets and walks faster.

"Fag," the girl spits, and looks away. Grantaire hardly notices. He jogs up the street to Enjolras' apartment, the air cold against his face. It smells like snow, like the holidays. All Grantaire wants is to hear Enjolras' voice.

He phones again outside the building, but Enjolras doesn't answer, so Grantaire hangs up after two rings. He takes the stairs two at a time. 

Enjolras' apartment door isn't locked— _he's home_ , Grantaire thinks, almost giddy. He twists the handle, pushes inside—

" _Grantaire_?" Enjolras is shirtless, wearing unbuttoned jeans. His hair in disarray. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

Grantaire opens his mouth, gets out one syllable. "I—"

And then the dark-haired boy comes out of Enjolras' bedroom.

* * *

 

Grantaire recognizes him immediately. No hesitation.

Twenties, tall, curly brown hair.

The boy from the photographs. From Enjolras' photographs.

All the words die on Grantaire's tongue.

* * *

"Shit," Enjolras says. "I didn't think you would be—"

"Who's this?" The guy's wearing boxer shorts, no shirt. He's Enjolras' age, Grantaire knows without knowing.

Enjolras opens his mouth.

"Nobody," Grantaire says. His voice breaks. "I'm nobody."

"Grantaire," Enjolras says: a warning. "Grantaire, _wait_."

But Grantaire has turned on his heel, spun towards the door.

" _Wait_ ," Enjolras says again, louder, and Grantaire turns back, his face hot with rage, shame, hurt.

"I let you _fuck_ me," he spits. The words are poison; they cut deep. Swift swords. Enjolras freezes, reels. 

"Don't call me," Grantaire says. He leaves Enjolras there, in the apartment, motionless.

* * *

He's halfway to tears at the top of the stairwell; by the time he's through the building's front door Grantaire is almost sobbing. His shoulders convulse with involuntary shudders—he can feels the tears, the anger, pulling at his eyes, his throat. He wants to kick down every door in the city, he wants to punch someone, he wants to drink until he's reeling and sick and can't remember his own name, he wants to cry, he wants abandon.

Two boys are booting a football around on the pavement outside the building, their breath rising in the frigid evening air. 

Grantaire starts walking, fast, without destination.

Above his head, a cold and silent snow begins to fall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of a shit ending, i know (shit in the sense that it's sad, not that it's actually shitty). also, i know that a 'fiver' isn't a currency term in france. i couldn't think of how many euros a teenage girl would want in exchange for a sex act. it's friday night. i'm tired. i've been coughing all day. i'm sorry. my knowledge of european currency is sorely lacking. i hope that you all keep reading!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, everyone! i know that it took quite a while for me to publish this, and for that i apologize. i've been figuring a LOT of stuff out with my future. chiefly, where i'm going to start college in the fall. it's a long and weird story, but i essentially gave up going to a college in new york city to be able to study theatre more at another college. i've also been spending a lot of time with my friends as we're graduating soon and i won't see them much over the summer. just throwing it all out there—it's why i haven't been very active writing this fic. however, i'm done with classes now so i'll probably have some more time to work on/finish this soon!

* * *

 

He wakes up having hit rock bottom.

Not metaphorical rock bottom, but  _actual rock bottom_.

There's grit against the side of his face, the taste of dirt in his mouth. He smells water; the thick green musk of it. 

"What the fuck." Grantaire eases himself upright. Rocks, dirt under his side. Snow. River. 

 _Shit_.

He's sitting at the edge of the Seine, at the mouth of a narrow concrete culvert that's hopefully  _not_ a sewer opening. It's snowed in the night. The air is cold, the river fast and dark. Passerby move across the water, pavement elevated ten feet above the river. They don't notice Grantaire, or pretend not to.

He coughs. He's wearing a jacket, a woolen hat. Fingerless gloves, jeans, unlaced shoes. His tongue is leaden, his mouth ashy. Memories come back slowly: a car, and a girl's face, rooms with the lights turned out. A body under his. A pill between his lips. A hand between his legs.

Screaming, and loud music. Dancing? Had it been dancing? His arms ache, his legs ache, his temples are fucking _pounding_. Grantaire stands slowly, straightens his back. A wave of dizziness sweeps him, the river and concrete banks swimming before his eyes. He's past the point of vomiting or passing out after this kind of thing, this kind of brutal wakeup. He had a couple of years ago—at thirteen, fourteen. Drinking and waking up, eyes hazy, doubled over in a backyard or alley, feeling like death incarnate.

He's gotten over that now, and for a moment Grantaire wonders if that's a good thing. Something worth congratulating himself for.

 _Good on you, R,_ he thinks bitterly.  _You've drunk yourself into a fucking disaster_.

On unsteady legs, he climbs a low, uneven set of stairs. The street above is busy with people. A woman pulls her young son away from Grantaire, and Grantaire wonders how horrible he must look. He goes up to a newsstand.

"What time is it?"

The vendor stares at him, unfriendly. "Clear out, will you?"

"I mean it. What time?" Grantaire tries to get a look at the guy's watch, but he pulls his hand aside, pushing down his sleeve. 

"Come on. This is bad for business. Go panhandle somewhere else."

"I'm not—"

"Go on."

Grantaire, defeated, steps into a coffee shop beside the river. It's warm, there's art on the walls. The girl behind the counter grimaces when he approaches.

"Could I have a coffee, please?"

"Do you have money?"

"Yes," Grantaire says, too soon. His pockets are empty. He leaves with her stare hot on his back. It's bitter outside, beginning to snow. He's shaking.

There's something pulling at him; sadness, or grief, or something. _But what is it?_

And then it hits him, hard and fast, opening a wound like a fucking black hole.

Enjolras.

The dark-haired boy.

Grantaire feels sick.

* * *

He doesn't know where to go. 

It's cold, getting colder.

He wanders. By the time he turns the last corner he knows where he's going. He knows why. He thinks about a nightclub in the north of the city, a place where he'd once let a guy fuck him so hard he'd cried. Thinking about it makes him feel sick and dizzy again. 

There's a long flight of stairs, dismal, the hallways empty and cold. Grantaire is shivering by the time he raises his fist and knocks on the door. Once, twice. His knuckles are coming down again when the bolt slides away and the door is pulled open.

"The fuck are you doing here?" Montparnasse snaps. He's shirtless, wearing black track pants. 

"Can I come in?"

"No." Montparnasse says flatly. "Not if you're going to try to fuck up my life again."

"I'm not, swear on—" but Grantaire can't think of anything important enough to swear on. "I swear."

Montparnasse sighs quietly. Drags a hand through unruly dark hair. He folds his arms.

"Fine. Come in. It's cold as fuck out here."

Grantaire lets Montparnasse usher him inside. The apartment is stark, surfaces uncluttered. Grantaire sees the same kit on the coffee table: a strip of rubber, a syringe. His gaze snags there and holds. Montparnasse sees him looking, scoffs.

"What? You want a hit?"

"Will it make me forget?"

"Oh, _Christ_." Montparnasse goes and sweeps the kit into a plastic box, shoves it under the table. "You've got to be shitting me with that bullshit.  _Will it make me forget?_ What kind of fucking sap are you?"

"I need something strong," Grantaire says. "I've been fucked up for the past day."

Montparnasse laughs. Short and brutal. An unkind sound.

"A day?"

"Yeah. Last night I must've passed out. Blacked out, woke up by the river."

"That why Éponine called me twice, asking if I'd seen you at one of my clubs or drug dens?"

Grantaire shakes his head, not understanding. "What are you...?"

"It hasn't been a day, man. It's been a week."

* * *

 

Grantaire sits down for a long time in Montparnasse's immaculate kitchen, thinking.

"My parents must be worried," he says finally. "If no one else, they would be."

"Maybe. Haven't heard anything about missing persons, though." Montparnasse makes tea, pours vodka in. "Hair of the dog."

Grantaire takes it. Drinks. " _Merci_."

Montparnasse doesn't reply. He lingers at the counter, drumming his fingers against the tile. "I should kick you out. I haven't forgiven you for dicking around in me and Éponine's business."

"Well,  _I_ sure as fuck didn't knock her up."

"Of course you didn't. You've never fucked a girl."

Grantaire chokes on a mouthful of tea and vodka, the liquid scalding his throat. "I'm not gay."

"Uh." Montparnasse gives him a swift and superior look. "You think I've never sucked a guy off? Never taken a dick up my ass? Come on."

"I thought you were." Grantaire feels his cheeks heat in a blush. "Straight. I guess. Because of. The whole—pregnancy thing."

"You're living in a black-and-white world, Grantaire. There's more than straight and gay."

"You're bisexual?"

Montparnasse shrugs. "Why confine myself? Anyways, you're staying the fuck out of my shit, you hear? That box under the coffee table? You don't fucking go near it, or I'll cut your fucking hand off while you're sleeping."

He removes a butterfly knife from the back pocket of his jeans, flips it open in a series of brutal wrist-twists. The blade is gleaming.

"Understand?"

Grantaire nods. "Understand."

"Good." Montparnasse walks—swaggers?—out of the kitchen. Grantaire watches him go, dumbfounded.

"Does this mean I can stay, man?"

"Long as you don't fuck my life up, like you did last time," Montparnasse shouts.

 

* * *

That's how Grantaire spends Christmas day cross-faded; drunk and high on weed and pills and something that he inhaled and is making his head spin, in a friend-of-a-friend of Montparnasse's in a stark apartment in Belleville. 

People keep coming up to him, offering him more alcohol and more drugs, and laughing because he's visibly the youngest by a couple of years.

"Don't you have a family?" a blonde girl asks several hours later, when they're all laying around, on a couch and the floor, strung out. Grantaire's head is in her lap. "Don't you have anyplace to go?"

"No," Grantaire says. Or thinks he says. He's not sure if he's speaking aloud or just thinking.

"It's okay," the girl says. "None of us do, either."

* * *

 

They say that he looks like a schoolboy. When Grantaire leaves hours later, they shout goodbyes from the flat. He calls his mother.

"I've been staying at a friend's," he says in a rush when she answers. "I'm so sorry I didn't call earlier."

"Good." There's sound in the background.

"What?"

"Good. Stay there. You stay with your friend, R."

"Maman?" He tries to make out what's happening in the background. Breaking glass? "Everything okay?"

"Your father is going through some—work issues—I'll call—love you."

She hangs up, the click ringing in Grantaire's ear. He laughs under his breath, low and sad. Walks back to Montparnasse's place alone through sheets of snow.

* * *

The days blur. It's hard to keep track when you're going from flat to flat, party to party. Montparnasse protects Grantaire in a way that Grantaire certainly hadn't presumed possible, won't let people ply him with the really hard drugs. Everything else is fair game. Grantaire loses track of dates; he forgets about school and about Enjolras and about the future. You don't think about the future when there's only the next day, only tomorrow, and how you'll get another high. It's nice to worry about things like that; things that don't matter so much.

Montparnasse lets him sleep on the couch, hang around the apartment during the day. One afternoon Grantaire steals some of Montparnasse's weed and rolls joints, smokes them while he calls Combeferre.

He knows it's a mistake. Maybe he's waiting for some kind of punishment, or maybe he wants to hear what his mother won't tell him. Either way, he waits until Combeferre picks up.

"Grantaire?"

"Yeah, it's me." Grantaire tilts the phone away to cough. "I figured I would call and—"

"Are you  _kidding_ me? Where the fuck are you?"

Grantaire has never heard Combeferre like this, his voice low and rough. 

"Staying with a friend. Kind of laying low, you know."

"I called the police, Grantaire. When you didn't come home. I called the police because no one else was. I was going to file a goddamn fucking missing persons report. I thought you were  _dead_."

When he says it: _I thought you were dead_ , his voice almost breaks. There's something undiluted there. Some anger, some betrayal. 

"Where the hell are you? In the city?" 

"With a friend. Free drugs and booze. Good deal. I don't plan on leaving anytime soon." Grantaire exhales smoke. He should tell Combeferre about Enjolras. He can't, though. It's easier to forget, or to not think about it. 

"So you're not coming home?"

Grantaire is silent. He hears Combeferre laugh down the line, a short and disbelieving laugh. 

"Didn't you even  _think_ about us?"

"Who's 'us'?"

Silence. Then: "Your family."

Grantaire looks out the window. A low line of rooftops. Bitterness rises in his throat like bile.

"I don't have a family."

Combeferre is quiet for a moment too long. Then he says, 

"Don't call me until you've gotten your shit together, Grantaire."

Grantaire waits until Combeferre hangs up before he lets the first sob escape his lips.

* * *

 

New Year's evening, Montparnasse and Grantaire go out.

"Do whatever you want, man. This is a night for celebrating," Montparnasse says, wandering through the flat in boxers, barefoot and shirtless. "I have a tradition of getting royally fucked up. You might as well join in."

Grantaire dresses in a black t-shirt and tight jeans, realizing that he's starting to pick up, maybe subconsciously, on fashion tips from Montparnasse. The thought is almost humorous, or would be if Grantaire didn't kind of distinctly fear becoming like Montparnasse.

There's something remarkable in Montparnasse's loneliness. It's a careful loneliness, and Montparnasse would probably sooner get knifed than admit to it. But beyond the usual gang of disillusioned lowlifes hanging around the flat, Grantaire is the only constant in Montparnasse's life. The others fade too easily into the city's underworld, shadow-like. At the first sign of trouble, they vanish. At the end of the day, it's only Grantaire and Montparnasse. Which Grantaire is becoming quickly uncomfortable with. 

Later, Grantaire doesn't remember the night. He becomes re-aware of himself two days later, back at Montparnasse's place. That evening, Montparnasse says,

"I think you should go home, man."

"What?" Grantaire feels a hot flash of insult. "You're telling me to clear out?"

Montparnasse combs gel through his dark hair. "It's been over a week. Why the fuck are you still here?"

"Fuck you, I don't need to tell you."

Montparnasse moves lightning-fast, has grabbed Grantaire's collar in an instant. "The  _fuck_ did you just say?"

Grantaire's breath catches in his throat. There's a frozen moment in which neither of them move or breathe. And then Grantaire tilts his head, presses forward to move his lips against Montparnasse's mouth.

"What the fuck," Montparnasse hisses, pulling away. Then: "What the fuck."

They slide against each other, breathless. Grantaire is struck by the brief and shocking thought that  _this is actually happening he's halfway to fucking Montparnasse_ when Montparnasse pulls away.

"Oh, my god." He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Man, no."

"What?" Grantaire straightens his shirt, flushing. "What's wrong?"

"You're—you're, like, a kid."

"I'm seventeen."

"I'm twenty-three. This feels wrong." Montparnasse says. So he  _does_ have some kind of moral code, Grantaire thinks. 

They skirt around each other for the next few days. Grantaire becomes aware that the vacation is drawing to a close. School is starting soon. The Friday before classes resume, he confides in Montparnasse, tells him everything about Enjolras and the dark-haired boy and the photographs. He leaves a few key parts out. Chiefly the fact that he'd fucked Enjolras, or Enjolras had fucked him, or they'd mutually fucked. Or whatever.

Montparnasse is weirdly understanding. It's mostly pity, Grantaire realizes quickly, and although that makes him feel pretty shitty he's privately glad.

"You know something?" Montparnasse says when Grantaire is in the doorway. He's holding a lit cigarette between his fingers, and for the first time Grantaire realizes how acrid the smoke smells. "You're really alright. You're—there."

"What?" 

"You're someplace nobody else is. I can't explain. Doesn't matter." Montparnasse sort of half-smiles. He looks sad. Grantaire sees that for the first time. 

"I think it matters."

"Go make him apologize."

Grantaire starts. The smell of snow comes in from the hallway. "What?"

"Go to your fucking schoolteacher and you make him fucking apologize to you."

Grantaire almost laughs; the absurdity of Montparnasse giving advice. "How?"

"How?" Montparnasse seizes Grantaire's shoulder, shoves him through the doorway. There's something gentle in the motion. "You fucking hold a knife against his throat until he says sorry. I don't know."

"I wouldn't—"

"Look," Montparnasse says, his hand on the doorknob. "Just don't do anything  _I_ would do."

* * *

 Classes resume on Monday. Grantaire climbs up the fire escape late at night, jimmies his window open. As it turns out, no one is home, so he takes a shower, goes to bed wearing his street clothes. His father comes home very early in the morning and bangs around in the kitchen before going to bed. Grantaire falls asleep, dreams about Enjolras touching him. Fucking him. It's a hazy dream, full of light and shadow, and Grantaire wakes up hard, jerks himself off in his bed. Thinks about Enjolras. He comes hard, biting the skin on the back of his wrist. 

In the morning, he gets up before dawn and walks to school. He doesn't take the Metro, but—just his luck—runs into Éponine outside the gate. 

"You bastard," she says, and hugs him hard. "I thought you'd fucking..."  _  
_

"I know," Grantaire murmurs into her dark hair. She smells like soap. "I know." When she pulls away, Éponine's eyes are bright with tears.

As the sun rises fully into a pale dawn, other students stream into the yard. Combeferre and Jehan, walking together; Jehan hugs Grantaire tightly, breathes something heartfelt into his ear that Grantaire barely makes out. Combeferre stands with his arms folded. Looking away.

"I understand," Grantaire says, when Jehan and Éponine have gone to their first period maths class. "If you don't want to talk to me."

Combeferre clenches his jaw. Presses his lips together. When he  _does_ look at Grantaire, his face is at once hard and tearful; he's on the verge of crying.

"You're my best friend," he says, finally. "And I think all the time about you overdosing, or getting drunk and getting yourself knifed, or shot, or—"

Then they're embracing, tightly, and Grantaire is almost crying. He's glad when Combeferre pulls away and says that he's got to get to class, because Grantaire's chest is all tight and he's on the verge of crying himself. 

 The hallway outside Enjolras' classroom suddenly seems a thousand meters long. Grantaire walks slowly, dragging his feet. His heartbeat pounds in his chest; he's jittery with nerves. Enjolras doesn't have a class, he knows, he checked. So why is his chest all tight, why does he feel like this?

The door is ajar. Grantaire hesitates outside. He's thinking so much that he  _can't_ think; everything is a haze of panic, emotion.

He steps inside.

* * *

 

"Oh, god." 

Enjolras closes the book he's reading. Not a textbook; a book of Marxist theories. From the school library. Grantaire swallows hard. 

"Grantaire," Enjolras murmurs, his eyes going to the half-open door. "Grantaire, I think we need to—"

"I want you to apologize to me." Grantaire's voice surprises him; the hardness of his words. "You owe me that."

"This really isn't a good time to talk. Honestly." Enjolras says. He pushes his chair back. "Grantaire, I'm more than happy to talk with you outside of school. But as long as you're here, in this building, we can't."

"Tonight, then. Eighteen hundred."

"Where?"

"The café next to your building." Grantaire realizes that he doesn't even know the name. It never seemed to matter, in the past. "Are you going to be there?"

Enjolras puts his forehead in his hands, then looks up. His eyes—his drowning eyes—are full and deep. 

"You know I will," he says. 

* * *

 

 He shouldn't be surprised when they come for him during maths—a knock on the door, and then one of the office ladies on the other side.

"We need," she consults a note in her hand, "Grantaire."

He stands up, lets the class's eyes follow him into the hallway. He brings his backpack; he knows the drill by now.

"What is it this time?"

She doesn't respond. Grantaire thinks about making a snide remark regarding her unflattering dress, but is struck by the entirely unnerving thought that  _that's really, really gay_. 

The headmaster works behind a glass door: Monsieur Valjean. Stern, kind, enigmatic. Grantaire opens the door without knocking; Valjean looks up from a file-folder.

"Grantaire." He indicates an empty chair before the desk. Grantaire sits. Valjean rubs his hands together, still skimming the folder. "We seem to have an issue on our hands, Grantaire."

There's something gentle, kindly in the way that he says Grantaire's name; a familiarity, like he'd do anything to help Grantaire, like he wants nothing more than to be assured of Grantaire's academic success. Valjean spent several years attempting to cultivate the image of a hard-ass headmaster, but, unsurprisingly, had failed. Grantaire is glad, likes that Valjean is kind and thoughtful and knows students by name, recognizes their faces.

"Uh," he says, mostly distracted, still thinking about Enjolras and about tonight, "what kind of issue?"

"Well." Valjean closes the file folder. "This isn't something that I like to tell students, but it must be done."

"What?" 

"Grantaire, you have failing marks in a majority of your classes. At this rate, sitting  _le bac_ is going to be—very difficult."

"You're wrong," Grantaire says, too quickly, and then, when Valjean looks startled, "No offense, sir. But that can't be right, I've been—"

"Grantaire, you've far surpassed your excused absences for this term. You've continued a trend of cutting classes and failing to turn in homework. You've missed a number of tests and failed to make them up. I'm sure that you can see why the administration is concerned about your grades."

Grantaire wants to hate Valjean. But the man is older, kind of fatherly. Incapable of incurring hatred. Grantaire swallows.

"What am I passing?"

Valjean opens the folder, scans it. "Studio Art."

"That's all I need, right?" A sort of hot desperation snatches at Grantaire. "I don't want to be, you know, a math student at university, or a scientist—I don't want to be a  _doctor_ , you know—"

"Grantaire," Valjean says, gently. His gaze is warm but sad. There's pity there. "Grantaire, unless you have some kind of academic turnaround in the next few weeks, I doubt that you'll be able to successfully pass  _le bac_. With your grades, anyways, it's highly unlikely that you'll be accepted to any university."

"Right." Grantaire tries to ignore the fact that he feels as if he's just been socked in the stomach. "Yeah. Right. Okay."

"I don't like telling students this sort of thing, Grantaire," Valjean says, and Grantaire wonders if the repetition of his name is some kind of psychological tactic, "especially during their last year of college. But it's relevant now. It's important for you to be aware of."

"Am I excused?" Grantaire chokes. Valjean nods silently. Grantaire shoves the chair back, ducks his head in an awkward sort of acknowledgement, and pushes back through the office. Someone calls his name behind him, but he doesn't turn around. He walks quickly, head down, blinking furiously; his eyes are full of sudden tears, hot, shameful. Grantaire wills himself not to cry. _  
_

He slams through the doors behind the stairwell, kicks the wall hard and ruthless. His foot collides hard with brick; Grantaire cries out, throat raw. He collapses against the wall, slides down until he's sitting, legs folded up to his chest. He doesn't cry; there are tears on his cheeks, but it's too cold to cry, his throat burns too much. He just sits in silence for a long time, the air frozen, smelling like metal and snow, the sounds of the city rising up around him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, i feel like this chapter ends on a sort of disjointed note. but i'll publish more in upcoming days, if not the next couple of weeks! feel free to comment/review this chapter and let me know what you think! i'm also always open to suggestions—i have a pretty good idea of where this fic is going, but i'll always consider suggestions from readers!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I graduated high school and I'm trying to find out work/do other stuff during the summer, which is why this took so damn long. Honestly, there was a period where I lost motivation for this fic. I'm still finding it, but I've gotten more inspired lately. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

 

"It's been raining," Enjolras says, as if Grantaire can't see the obvious. Heavy rain, the kind that should proceed snow, falling beyond the café's windows. Inside, the air is warm, nearly humid, and thick with the smell of coffee and steam, "all week. They say it's going to storm hard tomorrow. Or the next day."

"They're always right, aren't they?"

Enjolras' left index finger circles the rim of his cup. "It's a system of...logic...probability."

Almost without thinking, Grantaire says, "and what's the probability of you apologizing to me?". As soon as the words leave his mouth, Enjolras looks up, like Grantaire's struck him, punched him hard. 

There's a long moment of silence, during which Grantaire wonders if he's  _really_ fucked everything up this time. Then Enjolras drops his gaze.

"I don't speak enough languages to apologize enough, Grantaire—I don't know enough synonyms for the words  _I'm sorry_ and  _this is my fault_ to apologize to you enough."  

A pause. There's a sort of desperation in Enjolras' face that Grantaire recognizes as guilty, apologetic.

"Well," he says. "That was poetic."

Enjolras huffs out a quiet laugh. "Nothing poetic about this."

It's very difficult, Grantaire realizes, to feel the same bitterness that he'd felt hours ago. Difficult because Enjolras' beauty is like a statue, like marble; untouchable. Difficult because he hates himself for thinking like that, for thinking that Enjolras is  _beautiful_ and not just  _hot_ or  _a good fuck_. 

"I understand," Enjolras says suddenly, "if this isn't going to work out."

Grantaire jerks back to reality; Enjolras is looking at him very acutely. 

"Oh. You mean, if I leave you."

"Yes."

 "Yes." Grantaire pauses, and for a moment it's only them in the room; alone together. Then he says, "I'm not usually the one doing the leaving."

"What I did was inexcusable. It was the lowest thing a person could do in a relationship. Far and away, the lowest."

Grantaire is silent for a moment. Then: "Who is he?"

Enjolras looks swiftly away. "An old friend. From childhood. Schoolmate, all that. We were at university together."

"Of course."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." But bitterness wells up fast and dark in Grantaire's chest. "I should have seen that coming."

"Seen—"

"Seen that you'd rather fuck a goddamn private-school  _faggot_ than a scummy poor kid who isn't worth shit to you!" He doesn't mean to shout, or even to raise his voice, but Grantaire realizes how loud he's being. He pushes back his chair and stands.

"Let me  _finish_ , R—" Enjolras begins, but Grantaire is already snarling,

"I don't want a fucking explanation!"

He's never stormed out of a building the way he does now, shoving through the front door, past two girls in scarves and hats. He's not even wearing a jacket. The rain is coming down harder now, but Grantaire doesn't feel it, doesn't feel the bite of cold. 

He hears Enjolras call after him, but it's no use. Grantaire is already halfway to the Metro station, skittering down the stairs. Hot air blows up; the foul breath of the underground. Commuters shove past; Grantaire loses himself in the crowd. 

* * *

"Is Monsieur Valjean here?" Grantaire drums his fingers on the secretary's desktop; hard gray plastic. "I need to speak with him."

"He's in, but he's—" she breaks off as Grantaire spins around the side of the desk, making for Valjean's office. He opens the door without knocking. Valjean is sitting at his desk, writing with a ballpoint pen.

"By all means, Mister Grantaire," he says, not looking up, "please come in."

Grantaire is already in front of Valjean, the words spilling from his lips almost unbidden.

"I need to speak with you, sir."

"About what?" Valjean signs his name, a loopy signature at the bottom of the paper. Grantaire's fingers tighten around his backpack's straps.

"I need to drop a class, sir."

* * *

 

"You're serious." Éponine holds Grantaire's gaze for a moment, then drops it. She scoffs a little. "You're making that sacrifice."

"I'm failing, anyways. Was. Was failing."

"So you've given up on university."

"Come on." Grantaire slides further down on the fire escape, pushing his legs between the metal bars. Three floors below, pedestrians walk past without glancing up. Two kids smoking on a metal platform doesn't warrant attention. It strikes Grantaire that their existence is impermanent. Insignificance comes to mind. "Like I was going to pass  _le bac_ anyways."

"You might have," she says, and lights a cigarette.

"So you haven't quit," Grantaire says pointedly. Éponine turns her bottomless dark gaze upon him. It cuts him; it's swift and craftless. 

"Some things you don't quit."

 They sit in shared silence for a few minutes after that, Grantaire feeling the weight of responsibility, the weight of an uncertain future. He thinks, briefly, that he should be frightened or upset or maybe excited, but he feels nothing, or close to nothing.

After a while Éponine leaves, kissing him swiftly on the cheek before she slides down the ladder. Alone, Grantaire smokes another cigarette down to the filter, then throws the butt over the railing. He can hear the television playing at full volume inside, and when he ducks back into his bedroom he hears his parents arguing again. His mother's voice, then his father's—his father shouting—the sound of someone being slapped. Grantaire goes and locks his door. He sits on his bed in the dusky light for a long time, thinking about everything, feeling nothing. 

* * *

 

He waits a week before telling Combeferre, who is understandably surprised and also understandably not shocked.

"Half of our year won't pass  _le bac_ ," he says evenly. "There's no shame in going to a trade school. You'll end up being paid much higher than all of our wonderful classmates who decide to fuck around and spend four years studying something useless."

Grantaire laughs at that, but it makes him feel empty. He wants to say _I would have studied art, though, if I'd gone to university_ , but he doesn't; he's sure that saying so would make Combeferre feel guilty.  

That weekend they hang out around the city, doing things that they used to—buying cheap coffee in narrow cafés and wandering through parks, looking at vending stalls full of ugly artwork and tat sold to tourists. They don't talk about anything serious or heavy, certainly not the future. Combeferre mentions Éponine a few times—he says her name so softly, can't help but smile when it's on his lips, and Grantaire knows that he loves her. It makes him want to cry in the best way.

"I've really missed this," Combeferre says when they're walking back to the Metro at sunset. It's cold but feels more like springtime. There are clouds, but they're beautiful; stained red and gold by the low sun. "We drifted apart for a while."

"There was a lot of shit going on," Grantaire says, but he knows it's a stupid excuse. "With. You know."

Combeferre is quiet. He pushes his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose. "I know."

Later that night, at the sidewalk where they part ways, Grantaire says, "I thought you'd judge the everloving  _hell_ out of me for this."

Combeferre shakes his head. He looks like he's on the verge of saying something, but remains silent. Much later, Grantaire will look back and wonder what Combeferre had been about to say; but it doesn't matter, because whatever it is Combeferre  _doesn't_ say it. 

When he gets home his mother is nursing a black eye above the kitchen sink. Grantaire comes in and takes off his jacket and follows the light, the only light on in the flat, and she's there with a plastic icepack and the skin already darkening.

"He did this to you," Grantaire says, but it doesn't need saying—they both know, there's no question. No one else would touch his mother like that. Grantaire feels his chest go tight with anger, white-hot.

"It doesn't matter. Go to your room. It's nothing."

"It's not _nothing_." 

She turns, looks at him; her eye, already blackened, the skin around it dark. Grantaire sucks in a deep breath.

"Where is he?"

"Out."

"Drinking?"

His mother drops the icepack in the sink, turns to face him.

"Does that surprise you? Does it surprise you that I married a drunk? That he beats me like this? It shouldn't _surprise_ you, R. Very few things should surprise you any more."

The words are a slap in the face, so much so that Grantaire actually steps backwards. 

"Get out," she says. "Please."

Grantaire turns and leaves. He goes to his bedroom and begins to cram shirts and jeans into a bag, swings his backpack over his right shoulder. By the time his father gets home, he'll be long gone.

* * *

 

He ends up at the Thénardier place, stays for two weeks. Time goes quickly; Mme Thénardier is visiting her sister in the south (she's gone sort of inexplicably, but none of the kids seem to mind at all. It makes Grantaire a little sad, seeing how much happier they are under Éponine's care) and Monsieur Thénardier is waiting out legal troubles somewhere in the city (he can't come home, Gavroche informs Grantaire on the first evening of his stay, until some things "blow over"). So there's Éponine and Grantaire, like old times, looking after the kids and making meals and generally talking shit about their lives every night. 

Then they receive word that Mme Thénardier is returning, and presumably bringing hell with her, and so Grantaire clears out. He spends a week with Jehan. Jehan's place is tidy and quiet, and his parents are rarely home. They end up smoking a lot of weed and Jehan writes songs on his guitar. He tries to teach Grantaire a little, but it's difficult to pick up sober, let alone high, and Grantaire ends up laughing too hard to concentrate. Everything is nice and time passes slowly, and then it's early March and springtime. 

The last weekend that he spends at Jehan's, Saturday, on the balcony outside Jehan's bedroom, with the church bells ringing all over the city and a blue sky overhead, Jehan exhales a long stream of thick grey-green smoke and says,

"I wonder when we'll quit all this."

"All what?"

"This." He gestures to the glass piece; small, red and gold. "You know." 

"Uh." Grantaire laughs. "This isn't addictive. Pass it."

Jehan hands him the piece. Grantaire flicks the lighter, presses his thumb over the hole on the side of the piece. Brings the lighter down, waits. Watches the flame dance. It's so close to his nose that he can feel the heat on his skin. He inhales, the smoke heavy in his throat. Overwhelmingly herbal. Jehan always has good weed. Grantaire closes his eyes.

When he opens them, Jehan is watching him very distantly. 

"We've been smoking every day."

"You've never had a problem with it before." 

"I don't have a problem with it now. I just—wonder, sometimes."

"Wonder  _what_?"

"I'm not sure that it's so easy to quit. Sometimes I'll go a week without smoking and I miss the high like a drowning man would miss breathing."

Grantaire sets the piece down. He coughs. "That was really fucking poetic, Prouvaire."

Jehan pouts briefly. "It's not meant to be poetic. It's meant to be the truth."

Grantaire laughs it off; the high is kicking in properly, then, anyways, and everything is funny. But later that night, it's less funny, and it's difficult to evade the truth when you're lying in cold nighttime darkness listening to someone else breathing, and suddenly Grantaire is vibrantly lonely and he feels like crying.

He leaves the next morning, early. Jehan makes tea. They're alone in the apartment. Grantaire hugs him goodbye and takes his backpack and walks for a long time through the cool, misty streets. It's overcast and cold, doesn't feel like springtime anymore. He's about to take the Metro home, is at the top of the station steps when someone says,

"Grantaire,"

—and he turns and—

_shit._

"Oh."

"This is..."

"Yeah, I..."

"Didn't think I'd see you out at this hour." Enjolras' hand goes to the back of his neck. His cheeks are red. "I figured you'd be sleeping."

Grantaire feels that there's a quiet implication of  _sleeping off a night of getting fucked-up_ but he refrains from commenting.

"I'm on my way to church," he says stiffly. Enjolras laughs, embarrassed.

"In another lifetime, I might believe that."

 They stare at each other in silence for a moment. Then Enjolras ducks his head; he seems suddenly unable to meet Grantaire's eye.

 "Grantaire," Enjolras says, and suddenly any embarrassment is gone from his voice, the careful sternness returning, "can we please have a rational discussion about what happened?"

So, obviously, how can Grantaire decline? 

This is how he finds himself following Enjolras up a narrow, ill-lit set of stairs, and his palms are already sweating. Enjolras' apartment is spartan, all the floors clean-swept. It smells like laundry soap.

Enjolras makes tea, boiling water and pouring it into mugs. Grantaire lingers by the coffee table, trying to even out his breathing, wearing a familiar façade of apathy. 

"Here." Enjolras presses a mug into Grantaire's hand; he curls his fingers around the white ceramic, inhaling steam. "Two sugars, no cream. I remember."

That makes Grantaire feel sick.

"Sit," Enjolras says, "please."

Grantaire sits on the edge of a beat-up chair, something that he's sure Enjolras found in an alleyway or behind an apartment block. So eager to put an upscale past behind him, he was satisfied—even happy—to pick up other people's leftovers. The unwanted things.

That makes Grantaire even sicker.

"We already tried this," he says, knowing that it sounds petulant and stupid. "It didn't work out."

"I think that I owe you a better explanation."

 Grantaire tries not to laugh. "I don't think that this is a good idea."

"I was in a very bad place, mentally. My father had just died. It was—a weird time." Enjolras runs his hand through his hair, passes it over his face. God, Grantaire thinks: I could fucking drown in his eyes. Blue, deep. Like an ocean, but Grantaire has never seen the ocean. Or, if he has, he can't remember it.  _  
_

"Growing up, I heard a lot about what I was supposed to be. A good son, of course. I was going to go to school, graduate with highest marks, go to university. Become a businessman, like my father. Or a lawyer. Or a banker. Something respectable. Meet a nice young woman, someone from a family whose name my father recognized, take her home to meet my family during the holidays. Everyone would get along." His voice breaks a little. "We would marry young—twenty-five, twenty-six. Have kids. I'd get a promotion, a raise. By thirty, be well-situated, making enough money to keep my wife happy, send the kids to university."

Enjolras breaks off, looks down. "When I was thirteen, I had a friend in school. We would go to my place after classes let out, play video games. Do our schoolwork. One day he kissed me. I didn't—how could I—it was just something that happened between us. My bedroom door was open, my father saw. Beat me until I could barely stand. Like he could punch it out of me."

Grantaire wants to spit that he's not interested in a sob-story, but his chest tightens. "Sorry."

"Don't be. He knew. I knew. We both knew. He was disappointed in me, he always was. When he died it—it was strange. A weird time. Someone came back into my life from a long time ago, and. Things happened."

"What did he—why did—" Grantaire struggles for a moment. "What did he have that I don't?"

"Please, don't. It wasn't like that. I hate for you to think like that." A look of pain crosses Enjolras' face. "What I did was inexcusable."

"Yeah," Grantaire says. "It was."

Enjolras nods, looks down. Drinks some tea. When he looks up, he barely meets Grantaire's eye.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Grantaire exhales; his chest is so tight, it feels as if it's bound with iron. "I still want to kiss you."

He thinks  _I hate myself for that, can't you see that?_

"Don't," Enjolras begins—a warning—but Grantaire is already standing, stepping over his backpack to slide into Enjolras' lap. He presses their mouths together, a gentle movement. Enjolras freezes against him, then leans into the kiss. He pushes his tongue into Grantaire's mouth and Grantaire doesn't protest and maybe that's a bad thing but he can't afford to think like that, not when he's already hard and he's grinding down against Enjolras.

"This isn't—" Enjolras breathes when they pull apart, but Grantaire silences him, kisses him hard and wet. He shoves his hand between them, feels the tight front of Enjolras' pants. Moans into Enjolras' mouth. 

" _Fuck_."

Then they're grinding against each other, and Enjolras is unzipping Grantaire's jeans, taking his cock in his hand, spitting in his palm and working it over the head. Grantaire cries out—the feeling is electric—and arches his back. Enjolras' other hand is all over him, his chest, his neck. He thrusts his hips, trying desperately to find friction against Enjolras' hand and it's little use and  _agonizing_. 

"I'm going to come," Grantaire grinds out, and Enjolras pulls his hand away.

"Wait," Grantaire says, and unzips Enjolras' pants, curls his fingers around Enjolras' cock, runs his fingers over the head. Enjolras puts his head back; when he moans, it's very obviously in spite of himself. Grantaire jerks Enjolras off and Enjolras touches Grantaire, and they find a kind of balance that's somewhere just short of pure ecstasy and Grantaire's nearly shaking. Every time Enjolras touches him it's like fire; hot fingers on his neck, his collarbone. He strips off his shirt. Enjolras doesn't. Grantaire lets himself moans and cry out and writhe against Enjolras. Enjolras bites his lip to keep quiet. 

Then Grantaire is about to come, is moaning, "fuck, fuck, I'm gonna—" and Enjolras is practically holding him, one arm hooked around his back as Grantaire shakes against him, riding out the high. And then it's Enjolras coming; he looks Grantaire in the eye and moans low in his throat, a lonely, desperate, debased sound.

Afterwards, Grantaire curls against Enjolras, still sitting in his lap. He puts his head on Enjolras' shoulder, smells soap and mint. The sadness in his chest could swallow them both; in a way, it does.

"This is the last time, you know."

Enjolras moves, shifting to nod  _yes_. "I know."

"It has to be." Grantaire inhales again, and his chest opens even more. "It has to be, because I'm ending this."

"Here, now?"

Grantaire closes his eyes and leans further into Enjolras. "Here. Now."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~stay tuned for more adventure and angst with grantaire, enjolras, and the rest of the gang~


	14. Chapter 14

* * *

 

It's a long, slow slide into real spring. The weather warms, the nights become pleasantly cool but no longer cold. Snow falters and then stops. 

Grantaire manages to skate by with passing grades in art and Art History. He fails maths and history. Meanwhile, Combeferre stays up into the small hours of the night studying for  _le bac_ , passes with flying colors. It's evening when he knocks on Grantaire's bedroom door, the sky outside going scarlet and hazy with oncoming dusk.

"Ferre?" Grantaire closes his sketchbook, dropping a handful of charcoal on his desk. Combeferre steps into the bedroom, hands thrust in his pockets, a sheepish smile pulling the corners of his mouth.

"No way." Grantaire knows what Combeferre is going to say, almost like they share some kind of freaky mind-link. He knows in the way that Combeferre grins and spread his hands, palms up.

"Full scholarship. I'm going to the Sorbonne." 

"No fucking  _way_!" Grantaire cheers, and hurls himself at Combeferre, nearly strangles him in an iron-tight hug. 

And later, in the shower, Grantaire leans his forehead against the damp white tile and feels hot tears in his throat and on his cheeks, and he cries, happy-cries, because Combeferre made is, is currently making it, will make it. Digging himself out. It's everything that Grantaire isn't, everything that Grantaire couldn't be, and Grantaire couldn't be happier. Then he thinks about the sweet sadness in Combeferre's voice, the way he'd talked about plans to attend medical school, carefully, like he already knew how difficult it would be. Grantaire scrubs his face extra-hard with a towel, trying to dry any evidence of crying. When he looks in the mirror his reflection is steam-blurred. He looks almost happy.

* * *

 

A few days before the spring holidays, Éponine slips up the fire escape and climbs through Grantaire's window while he's working on a painting. She kneels beside him on the floor and watches him work silently. Then she says,

"Want to go to Spain with me?"

Grantaire's hand stills on the paintbrush.

"You don't have to say yes," Éponine continues. "Combeferre was supposed to go, but he has to figure out all this stuff with scholarships and finances. So he can't. So I thought you should."

Grantaire ducks his head. "Sounds expensive."

"I'll pay for you," she says, and smiles—a wolf's smile, broad and clever. "Papa's out of the joint, and we've got some extra spending money around."

"For real?" Grantaire taps his brush on the side of the cup he cleans them in. The smell of paint thinner is thick in the stuffy, warm room. "Where'd that come from?"

Éponine is already sliding out the window, dark hair curling over her flushed cheek. She smiles again.

"Trust me, you don't want to know."

* * *

Five days later, Grantaire is hanging off Éponine's shoulder at a neon-dizzy club in Ibiza, surrounded by drunken revelers and high off his ass and having the time of his  _life_.

Paris is another world, already half-forgotten—bad weather and bad memories, but here everything is sunny and hot and perfect, and there's a handsome stranger sliding warm hands around his waist.

They fumble into a bathroom, Grantaire kissing the young man only because he has curly blond hair and high cheekbones, and he knows that it's so, so entirely fucked up but he's already rock hard in his jeans.

"Fuck, that's good," the guy hisses when Grantaire unzips his jeans. He's not French. Grantaire speaks basic English, enough to stumble by, but sex is a pretty universal language. He jerks the guy off, fumbling with drunkenness, and when the stranger comes he pulls Grantaire against him in a rough kiss. Then he reaches down, pulls at the zipper of Grantaire's jeans, rubs his cock through his underwear. Grantaire's hips stutter, lips parting in a messy moan. The guy's barely got a hand around his cock when Grantaire comes, whimpering, his fingers tangled in the stranger's curly blond hair.

Afterwards, lying in the blue darkness of a hostel room with Éponine, he feels sick with guilt and regret. 

"I shouldn't have ended it," he murmurs, and only realizes that he's spoken aloud when she stirs and mumbles,

"Huh?"

"Nothing." Grantaire shifts on his sleeping bag. There's another couple of kids in the room; teenagers equally drunk and stoned. They're all fast asleep. Grantaire turns to face the wall. He dreams about fucking Enjolras, coming hard with his cock inside Enjolras.

When he wakes up, he doesn't remember the dream.

* * *

It's the best holiday Grantaire's ever had. They spend a week in Spain, drinking and accepting drugs without discrimination, going to the beach with awful hangovers and drinking black coffee with whiskey poured in. Éponine drags Grantaire to countless clubs and he forces her to go to an underground rock show. They tumble into their sleeping bags at the hostel in the small hours of the morning, before dawn when everything still feels cool and new. It's fantastic. Paris is a lifetime away and a lifetime ago. 

Of course, when they come home it's pissing rain. 

"Shit." Éponine hauls her suitcase over the curbside, knocking it against Grantaire's ankles. "Sorry."

Grantaire hitches his backpack higher onto his shoulders, helps Éponine get her luggage under a shop awning. The weather is totally miserable, and it's bitingly cold. Grantaire is almost out of money, having spent a frankly horrifying amount on drinks and club fees, but pays for a cab home. He hugs Éponine goodbye, and then climbs up the stairs and embraces his mother and takes off his shoes and collapses on his bed. And then he sleeps for an entire day.

Sleeping is easy, though. It's waking up that's difficult. 

Grantaire feels half-dead for the next week, almost ghostlike. He drifts from home to school and back again, falls asleep obscenely early and wakes up in just enough time to splash his face with water, get dressed, and make the morning train. Éponine and Combeferre have been spending a lot of time together, and Éponine's talking about vocational school. She's considering becoming a hairdresser, or maybe going into clothing design. Street-style, she tells Grantaire one afternoon as they're walking home. All black, everything really sleek. Expensive. There are so many fashion houses in the city, and they send designers over to England all the time. Grantaire listens absentmindedly while she talks about London, a sprawling gray city all rainy and beautiful, with old shops and a river that probably looked a little like the Seine. 

He's been having trouble thinking straight lately; namely, keeping his thoughts from wandering to Enjolras. Which he hates. Like, a  _lot_. Ending things was difficult, but it had felt so  _good_. The words had been solid in his mouth. When he'd said them, he'd felt righteous and pure. When he'd left that night, he'd felt invincible. Now he feels like total shit.

"I can  _feel_ you thinking about him," Jehan says one evening in April, as they're smoking up on the fire escape. "It's, like, coming off of you in waves."

"Whatever," Grantaire mutters, and takes another hit. "It doesn't matter."

"Maybe it does. Maybe you're, like, meant to be." Jehan gives him a sideways glance, all freckles and long hair and girlish eyelashes. God _damn_ , why is Jehan so fucking romantic about everything? It's all old poetry and graveyards and waterfalls in the fucking mist. 

"That's so unhelpful," Grantaire says dramatically. Jehan shrugs.

"Just a thought," he says.

It's a thought that Grantaire can't keep out of his head. All of his sketches turn into Enjolras. He has unsettling dreams about Enjolras, dreams in which Enjolras invariably dies or leaves the continent, bound for either America or, like, Australia. Or something. In one, Enjolras is recruited for a research expedition to Antarctica, which is both unrealistic and terrifying. Grantaire wakes up sweating. 

And if he pictures Enjolras while jerking off, who can blame him? It's something he makes an  _effort_ not to think about, to block out. Instead, he thinks about other things. Like random guys he's seen on internet porn, and people he's hooked up with in the past. But inevitably Enjolras' face swims into his mind's eyes, and Grantaire ends up coming embarrassingly quickly. 

The days fade into weeks, the weeks into a solid month. Before Grantaire fully realizes it, they're graduating from college. Éponine has full plans to enroll in vocational school in the fall, and Jehan is going to university in Provence, where his extended family lives. There's a blur of celebrating, and when everything is said and done Grantaire gets miraculously and grossly drunk. 

 Which is how he finds himself on an unfamiliar curbside at about midnight on a Saturday, a neon-drenched street reeling and spinning around him. He gropes for something to hold on to and ends up gripping a parking meter so hard that his knuckles whiten. 

"Are you okay, brother?" A passing guy in a white denim jacket asks. "Need some help? Something to take your mind off things?"

"Huh?" Grantaire says, and then, "Uh, I don't—"

"You with someone? You need someplace to sleep it off?" The guy steps a little closer, and Grantaire is about to back away when someone says,

"He's with me."

The guy mutters and walks away, and Grantaire is pretty sure that he's either totally shitfaced or hallucinating, because  _no way_ is that—

"You're kidding," he says, and then, "this is a sick fuckin' joke."

"If it is, it's not very funny." Enjolras' mouth is a hard, thin line. "You can't even stand up straight. What are you thinking, Grantaire?"

"They're all going to school," he slurs. "Trade school, and university. And I'm here with no job and my shitty fuckin' self and I hate everything."

And then he throws up.

His head is spinning and he feels like utter shit, and his mouth is all cottony and his stomach is heaving. 

"Fuck," Grantaire mutters, dropping down to sit on the curb. The concrete is cool. He feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Let me pay for a cab ride home."

"No." He almost says  _fuck you_ , but stops himself. "I can't—my mom can't see me like—this. She'd." He swallows convulsively. "Kill me."

"Then." A pause. "You could—crash at my place. For tonight. Or until you're able to get home safely."

And, fuck, Grantaire keeps forgetting how  _young_ Enjolras is. 

"Okay," he mutters. He lets Enjolras help him up, and there's a brief shortcut through some alleyways, and Grantaire almost throws up again but manages to stop himself in time. Then stairs and bright lights and he's sitting on a couch. Enjolras is boiling something. Grantaire swears that he's only going to close his eyes for a  _second_ , because he's way too proud to fall asleep on Enjolras' couch. 

Next thing he knows, he's waking with a start. The apartment is dark and quiet, except for a single cone of light in the kitchen. Enjolras is doing something with his back to Grantaire. Grantaire sits upright and passes his hands over his face. 

"Shit," he says aloud, into the silence. Enjolras turns around. 

"Oh. Hey."

Grantaire's mouth tastes like total death. "I'm gonna," he says, and gestures in the direction of the bathroom. Enjolras nods and Grantaire pushes his way down the hallway, closes and locks the door behind him. He douses his face with water, squirts some of Enjolras' toothpaste on his index finger and sort of swirls it around his mouth until everything tastes minty. Then he turns off the light and steps outside. His head is throbbing.

"I made you tea," Enjolras says, when Grantaire reenters the kitchen. "It got cold, so I made you another cup."

"Thanks," Grantaire says softly, accepts the ceramic mug. He feels wholly uncomfortable with this situation, with him in the kitchen and Enjolras making tea, like when they were together. The word  _together_ sticks on his tongue. Enjolras puts sugar in his tea and drinks some. Grantaire does the same, mostly because it's a way to fill the awkward silence. Finally, Enjolras says,

"So, graduation."

"Uh-huh."

"Any...plans?"

Grantaire scoffs aloud. "What you saw tonight, probably. For the next few months."

Something shifts in Enjolras' face, behind his blue eyes. "Grantaire, you can't treat yourself like that."

"Oh?" Grantaire feels a smirk twitch at his mouth, hates that he's mocking himself at a time like this. When Enjolras is very obviously trying to be kind, or reprimanding, or whatever.

"You'll drink yourself to death, Grantaire. You'll blink and next thing you know you'll be forty years old, alone, drinking yourself into a fucking  _stupor_ every night! Do you know what that would—" Enjolras seems to catch himself, then, and he breaks off. 

"What?" Grantaire says, and he's sort of dimly aware of the pain in his temples, and the fact that Enjolras has stepped closer, that they're about a foot apart...

"Nothing," Enjolras says, but, god, he sounds like _heart_ is breaking. "Nothing."

"It didn't sound like nothing." Grantaire says. And he's  _definitely not_ getting hard right now, except that he is, and Enjolras is  _so fucking close_ and he's aware that he's breathing hard and his jeans are painfully tight. 

"This is such a fucking terrible idea," Enjolras says, and closes the distance between them. Grantaire practically thrusts his tongue into Enjolras' mouth, sucks hard on his lower lip. Enjolras moans low in his throat, his fingers curling around the material of Grantaire's shirt. 

Grantaire fumbles his jeans open, yanks the zipper down. He's panting, hard, and he feels a weird mixture of half-guilt and overwhelming hotness. He gets a hand around his cock, blinks up at Enjolras. 

"It's been so goddamn  _fucking_ long," he moans, and Enjolras just stands there, hands braced on the counter on either side of Grantaire's shoulders. Grantaire bucks his hips up, the head of his cock already wet with precum. He spits anyways, into his palm, twists down hard. It makes the slide that much slicker, that much sweeter, and a slack-jawed moan tumbles from his lips before he can stop it. 

" _Fuckkk_..."

Enjolras' eyes go dark, his pupils wide in the dim light. "Fuck yourself," he hisses, and bends down to suck on Grantaire's lower lip. Grantaire  _keens_ and thrusts into his curled fingers, fast and rough, another moan caught in his throat. He knows what he must look like—wild, wrecked. He knows how it must be driving Enjolras to the goddamn  _edge_. It's almost too much. 

"I'm gonna—" Grantaire's voice is high, desperate. 

"Come," Enjolras leans forward. "I want to fucking  _hear_ it."

There's something totally filthy about hearing Enjolras curse, and Grantaire comes hard all over his fingers and stomach. His toes curl, his back arches, his legs nearly give out. A sobbing moan slides from his lips. Enjolras catches him in a hard kiss.

"Fuck," Grantaire gasps when Enjolras pulls away. Suddenly he feels like crying. He's still drunk. He hates, like, everything. The entire world. "Fuck, that was so."

What? Stupid? Hot? Both?

"Yeah," Enjolras agrees, quietly. "Fuck."

Grantaire's cheeks heat in a blush; he's not exactly embarrassed, but it's kind of awkward. End things and then show up drunk and jack himself off and be all...moan-y and slutty about it. 

"I should probably go."

"It's the middle of the night," Enjolras says, as if automatically. "Just stay."

It's easier to agree. Grantaire cleans himself up and takes off his jeans and shirt and borrows some boxers from Enjolras, and slides between Enjolras' cool sheets. It feels so strange to be sharing a bed again, to feel body heat next to him. To know that it's not a stranger, that he doesn't have to pretend. 

"Maybe this was all a mistake," he murmurs, and it's the alcohol talking, and the sadness, and his deadend future and the fear and the worry. And he isn't sure what he's talking about anymore—a mistake to leave the first time, a mistake coming back. A mistake to kiss Enjolras that day in the classroom, so many months ago. 

"It wasn't," Enjolras whispers against Grantaire's hair. His hands are on Grantaire's chest and stomach, holding him. It makes Grantaire deeply and namelessly sad. "It wasn't a mistake, R."

Hearing Enjolras say his name like that,  _R_ , makes his chest ache a little. Grantaire closes his eyes. He feels himself sliding into a sweet and dreamless sleep, warm, protected. He lets it happen; he lets go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the short chapter! i'm getting ready to go to college, and it's gotten totally crazy. that being said, i have an ending for this fic that's gonna be wild (and great, hopefully). rock on, everyone.


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